For some reason Uber reminds me of the rental car business. Yeah it appears to be hard to build a monopoly there.
Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
211–220 of 413 posts
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#212I live in Singapore and Uber is a little cheaper than the excellent cab services which operated here even before Uber. There is a big competitor to Uber here called Grab. I switched to Uber because their service is good, drivers are gracious and cars are nice and they give me good offers. Last year I took 300 Uber rides, never once taking the usual Comfort Delgro Cab because their drivers suck. If prices were the sam…
I lived a short while in Chiang Mai Thailand. At the time Uber was just getting started and Grab was WAY better than Uber. I really wanted to like Uber there, but after about 5 times of the drivers 1. not finding me (yes, even with GPS), 2. not showing up at all after a long time waiting, or 3. not knowing where they were going.. I gave up. It seemed that they lacked training and that they were mostly trying to get the bonus that Uber was offering in the introductory period. Grab was much more established and worked really well.
That said, the past few times I've landed in an airport and need a ride to my hotel, I didn't bother with Uber or Grab (in Thailand and various US states), because it was just so much more convenient to walk to the curb where the taxi mafia was congregated, tell them my hotel, and be on the way.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Subsidies for Uber's drivers are responsible for the majority of the company's losses globally, [head of finance] Gupta told investors" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose...
Uber only uses subsidies when trying to break into new markets to expand. If they stopped expanding, they would become profitable rather quickly. Many of their losses were due to the turf war in china, which is now over. They have a 20% stake in Didi now, which will almost certainly recover their losses.
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Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#214The commercial airline industry has lost money over the whole of its existence. If I'm flying from NYC to DAL, I'm flying the cheapest carrier (with a slight nod to Frequent Flyer programs). I'm not sure how Uber, Lyft, etc are any different than Southwest, American, etc. Cab companies (which I hate) and airlines saw this years ago and promoted regulations to protect their fees (and, thereby, wages). Airlines lost th…
TFA and a lot of commenters here don't seem to understand that Uber doesn't want to compete with taxi services, which are a niche business to be disrupted en route to the real prize. It wants to compete with your car - imagine 12 lanes of L.A. traffic composed mostly of Ubers. That's their dream. They even admit this in public. [0] The day they can get cost per mile one penny below what you'd spend owning a Toyota Ca…
Is there a reason to believe that Uber will be able to beat a Toyotas On Demand service that Toyota will inevitably launch?
Seems to me that the manufacturers will always be able to undercut on price once cars are fully self-driving, eliminating the value of the driver network.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#215Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#216I think Uber's business model relies on self-driving cars. They're paying subsidies now to build a brand -- the name "Uber" has become synonymous with "pull out your cell phone and call for a ride" -- that will be very valuable once self-driving taxis become a commodity (which will happen shortly after their introduction). Uber is not a bet on who can build the most profitable taxi company now -- it's a bet on a bran…
Agreed, and the author even sets us up for this - again and again he mentions how the largest sink is the drivers, the largest cost is the drivers, the biggest blocker is the drivers. Remove the drivers from the equation and things suddenly become a lot simpler. Imagine if instead of becoming an uber driver, you retrofit your car with an Uber Automated Car Taxi Converter(c), "guaranteed to put your car to work for yo…
After having two nightmare drivers this week where I actually had to end the ride early and get out of the car, I can't wait for self-driving cars, and whatever service that rolls out self-driving cars first is going to get all of my business.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#217The commercial airline industry has lost money over the whole of its existence. If I'm flying from NYC to DAL, I'm flying the cheapest carrier (with a slight nod to Frequent Flyer programs). I'm not sure how Uber, Lyft, etc are any different than Southwest, American, etc. Cab companies (which I hate) and airlines saw this years ago and promoted regulations to protect their fees (and, thereby, wages). Airlines lost th…
The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 (to disestablish the CAB) was passed during the Carter administration, not Reagan.
Also, while the 2001 recession meant that the airline industry lost more money then they had made in profit from the Wright Brothers up to that point, since then they have become net positive again, which seems to have been largely from mergers reducing capacity and so driving down supply.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#218Why everyone assumes that Uber could be allowed to become a monopoly? There are anti-monopoly laws. I understand that so far Uber was allowed to break lots of laws - but this cannot go on indefinitely.
Because the whole point of Uber is to destroy private transportation, not to make a profit. That means ignoring monopoly laws like we do for other centralized intelligence services.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't say I speak for everyone but I mostly walk to get to places and drive when I have to. I live close enough to an ALDI to get most of my groceries by walking and I can walk to work too. Owning a car means always needing a parking space, going out to get gas, paying for insurance, inspections, etc, having to be capable of driving (because when I'm sauced on a Saturday night I really want to get greasy food, but I…
> A car isn't much of a status symbol when most of your friends can't afford a nice one either. Kinda makes you look like a dick, in comparison. Isn't that exactly what makes it a status symbol? Keeping up with the Joneses, and all -- it's one thing to not play the game, but that doesn't mean a lot of people don't, and this seems to just be agreeing with what makes it a status symbol. Most American cities are suffici…
Ehhhh no one who is cool is into cars... having a nice fixie probably correlates more with who is getting tail than a relic from the 1920s.
Re: Why I don't believe in Uber's Success
#220Here's a table of Uber's funding rounds.[1] What's keeping Uber going is Saudi Arabia's sovereign-wealth fund, which put in $3.5 billion last summer. They also took on $1.15 billion in debt last year. That's real debt at 5% interest, not some convertible deal. Bloomberg says Uber is losing $800 million per quarter.[2] Unless they can find a bigger sucker than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they run out of money in 2018…
Bigger sucker would be ipo
For an IPO, Uber would have to publish real audited GAAP financials. Those would look terrible. Uber's over-valuation would not survive.