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Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

nytimes.com

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Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#161

Post by nodesocket »

searchhn wrote: post #157
alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

Yes.. as a bay area resident can confirm this. I switched totally to Lyft the past few weeks and have no issues finding a ride promptly. Also all drivers that I met seem to be driving only for Lyft. PS: What convinced me to totally switch was this https://github.com/lyft/envoy , my way of saying thanks for the Lyft team.

This is bay area bubble mentality (I live downtown SF). Does not represent the vast majority of Uber's business and market.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#162

Post by aedron »

keeptrying wrote: post #77

Waymo will have the first self driving cars on the road. They are so ahead of everyone. I think everyone including regular car companies buy the tech from Waymo in the short term.

> Waymo will have the first self driving cars on the road

Which are still way, way off in the future (if ever).

I propose 'self-driving cars' are the 'flying cars' of our generation: Something that seems inevitable and just around the corner, yet here we are.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#163

Post by wirelessest »

onion2k wrote: post #152
jfoster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lyft barely exists outside of the US. Uber is still on top if you take a global view.

As I understand it Uber's profits from the US market (and VC money) is funding the global expansion. If Uber lose their dominant position in the US we should expect their plans in the rest of the world to stop quite quickly; they won't be able to afford them.

Is Uber making profits in the US market?

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#164

Post by kornish »

onion2k wrote: post #152
jfoster wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lyft barely exists outside of the US. Uber is still on top if you take a global view.

As I understand it Uber's profits from the US market (and VC money) is funding the global expansion. If Uber lose their dominant position in the US we should expect their plans in the rest of the world to stop quite quickly; they won't be able to afford them.

> and VC money

Yeah, this is pretty key. If Uber's dominant position in the US is slipping but there's still a clear way for them to emerge on top globally and cash is the limiting concern, it seems likely they'll be able to continue subsidizing international expansion with more VC money.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#165

Post by CPLX »

nodesocket wrote: post #150
alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

I'd say this assessment is clouded by your own judgements of Uber. Uber is vastly larger than Lyft. I've taken Uber's all over the world (Europe, South America), Lyft barely has market penetration in rural areas of the United States. I recently bet my friend who is supremely confident that United Airlines business will be significantly impacted due to the passenger incident. Thus far, it appears United is doing just…

But the finance fundamentals of Uber are truly horrible.

Their only explanation for literally lighting billions of dollars in funds on fire to subsidize rides is supposedly to consolidate market share. If they don't have a defensible position and they lose money on every transaction what exactly do they have to show for it?

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#166

Post by gshulegaard »

It would appear that Lyft is making some strong ties with Google as of late. Between this and the announcement of the Lyft partnership with IBM and Google to work on some sort of Kubernetes router mesh [1] I am starting to see a trend.

"We are excited to announce that we are working in partnership with both Google and IBM to bring Envoy to Kubernetes. Fun fact: there are now more people working on Envoy at Google than there are at Lyft! We have a lot of other things planned with Google that we will be able to share more about in the coming months."

[1] https://eng.lyft.com/envoy-7-months-later-41986c2fd443

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#167

Post by exadeci »

searchhn wrote: post #157
alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

Yes.. as a bay area resident can confirm this. I switched totally to Lyft the past few weeks and have no issues finding a ride promptly. Also all drivers that I met seem to be driving only for Lyft. PS: What convinced me to totally switch was this https://github.com/lyft/envoy , my way of saying thanks for the Lyft team.

Uber is present in 581 cities and 81 countries.

Lyft is present in 300 cities in America.

Having IT people in SF using Lyft instead of Uber is only a tiny change.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#168

Post by cool_shit »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

I just had a really bad experience with Uber myself. Here's my data point:

I was just trying to get an Uber the other day in a large city and I waited over an hour in the rain. The first N-1 drivers that accepted my request cancelled on me after 5 minutes.

Eventually, a driver picked me up. He didn't want to pick me up where I was, and had a very hard time communicating to me where he was. After some back and forth walks-100-ft-"Do you see me now?"-repeat for about 10 minutes, he asked me to just cancel the request.

I said no. I wasn't going to risk paying a fee to cancel. I was already waiting in the rain for an hour.

Eventually the driver found me and took me to my location. The whole ride was quiet until the driver decided to break the silence with full-volume anti-slavery rhetoric on the radio.

That day I learned that Uber's algorithms, whatever they are, led to at least a single very bad experience. I didn't downvote the driver. Instead, I just didn't rate him. That said, I'd say 95% of my Uber experiences were very good.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#169

Post by bigbugbag »

nodesocket wrote: post #150
alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

I'd say this assessment is clouded by your own judgements of Uber. Uber is vastly larger than Lyft. I've taken Uber's all over the world (Europe, South America), Lyft barely has market penetration in rural areas of the United States. I recently bet my friend who is supremely confident that United Airlines business will be significantly impacted due to the passenger incident. Thus far, it appears United is doing just…

Although Uber has a better market penetration right now, it seems each day we're getting closer to the tipping point for Uber. Once Uber loses traction and grip, what prevents the now uber driver to switch to become lyft drivers ? People looking for rides do not care if it's uber or lyft or something else as long they have a ride and it's not too expensive.

United Airlines having a good Q2 quarters will not help Uber in any way escape the trial vs google or suddenly give them a profitable business model other than let's burn through investor money and conspire to get google technology to get rid of the drivers in the not so distant future.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#170

Post by bigbugbag »

kornish wrote: post #164
onion2k wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it Uber's profits from the US market (and VC money) is funding the global expansion. If Uber lose their dominant position in the US we should expect their plans in the rest of the world to stop quite quickly; they won't be able to afford them.

> and VC money Yeah, this is pretty key. If Uber's dominant position in the US is slipping but there's still a clear way for them to emerge on top globally and cash is the limiting concern, it seems likely they'll be able to continue subsidizing international expansion with more VC money.

Unless this VC money goes to pay for trial expenses against google.
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