131–140 of 176 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
neither are roads. it doesn't matter how full the bus is when the road is empty, but the number of cars that a bus is taking off the road at peak road usage time is pretty close to the full capacity of the bus, in any bus system i've ever ridden.
This is assuming that everyone who is on the bus would be driving/riding in a car instead, which I'm not sure is true.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Walking and mass transit suck for people who are: traveling with kids, obese, disabled, short on time, carrying groceries, elderly, and/or in a place with bad weather. That's not even mentioning people who can't afford to live in dense, central urban environments. Self-driving, solar cars solve all problems of mass transit and are far cheaper, since they use existing roads.
These are all examples of European mass transit users. We even have places designated fir disabled, injured and elderly people on every bus, tram and metro.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Walking and mass transit suck for people who are: traveling with kids, obese, disabled, short on time, carrying groceries, elderly, and/or in a place with bad weather. That's not even mentioning people who can't afford to live in dense, central urban environments. Self-driving, solar cars solve all problems of mass transit and are far cheaper, since they use existing roads.
And anyone with more than a handbag to carry. Many workers travel with tools. Im going to training next month and have to bring about 80lbs of various stuff with me. Hauling that in and out of busses, not to mention finding places to secure it while i sleep/eat, wouldnt be much fun. But it all fits in my car nicely. And no, i cannot send it by courier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure they will try to hide that by offering subscriptions, loyalty cards, better chairs, larger cars, larger monitors, Netflix, faster rides, etc, but the competition will go wherever the demand is and offer that $5 ride for $4.50. I’m not sure how well they will be able to diversify their product while keeping the economies of scale. If 10% of your customers is willing to pay for more leg space, can you get by w…
You would travel in reduced comfort for a year, however small the difference, to get the latest samsung/iphone?
Or, perhaps you have a small frame and the difference in leg room wouldn't impact you at all.
I'm skeptical about all this. Hubert Horan [1] has done a great job exposing Uber's failed business model in 11 part series on NakedCapitalism ("Can Uber Ever Deliver?"). Same goes for Lyft. When it comes to self driving cars, why should Uber or Lyft have any massive advantage over other players and what makes us think it won't turn into something like an airline industry which has been unprofitable for most of their…
This whole thing reminds of Buffett, Charlie Munger and the textile mill machinery story. I need to find the exact link for it though. Here's what I can remember from top of my head: They were offered more "efficient" machinery, which could manufacture more textiles than the old machines. "It will pay for itself" was the pitch. But they refused as more efficient machines meant they had to pass on the savings to the c…
Google is mining millions of captchas for their self driving cars, they could publish their algorithms for it too, but unless you have access to all that beautiful training set, it wouldn't be much of use.
I have no idea how lyft or uber is going to get that much data, maybe potentially buy paying drivers more to stick sensors on their cars to collect insane amounts of data? But it's gonna be a tricky thing to get right
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla has 10x the computing/engineering/cash/data resources to solve the self driving car problem than Uber? In revenue/market cap/profit Uber and Tesla are nearly equal in size. The way I see it, Lyft and Uber are already "big corps", and there are likely several logistic concerns that give Lyft/Uber a major head start on Google despite Google's alleged software superiority. However, I don't see Google releasing a m…
Tesla already has a fleet of cars mining driving data for it, putting them way ahead of Uber.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber owns their maps.
This seems to prove otherwise: https://instagram.com/p/BdJvxwmn2ri/ Side by side as of a few minutes ago.
I'm skeptical about all this. Hubert Horan [1] has done a great job exposing Uber's failed business model in 11 part series on NakedCapitalism ("Can Uber Ever Deliver?"). Same goes for Lyft. When it comes to self driving cars, why should Uber or Lyft have any massive advantage over other players and what makes us think it won't turn into something like an airline industry which has been unprofitable for most of their…
Detailed cost data from studies of traditional operators in Chicago, San Francisco and Denver showed that 58 cents of every gross passenger dollar (fares plus tips) went to driver take home pay and benefits, 9 cents went to fuel and direct fees, 18 cents went to vehicle costs and the remaining 15 cents covered corporate overhead and profit.
This in essence states that taxi business has upper limit of 15% margin. That's very low however that does not mean Uber or Lyft like businesses are fundamentally flawed. It just means Uber/Lyft has to just figure out how to survive with, say, 10% margin and they have opportunity to drive out higher margin traditional businesses. The nationwide volume can still yield great profitability (just like Amazon model). So Uber/Lyft are perfectly viable and profitable businesses, at least in theory.
Also notice that driver comp is 58%. That's massive. Self-driving will absolutely change the landscape. I would highly doubt that vehicle ownership would be as important as it is now once self-driving becomes norm. It's similar to everyone doesn't own water well any more because you have water on-demand at any time you want.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m sure they will try to hide that by offering subscriptions, loyalty cards, better chairs, larger cars, larger monitors, Netflix, faster rides, etc, but the competition will go wherever the demand is and offer that $5 ride for $4.50. I’m not sure how well they will be able to diversify their product while keeping the economies of scale. If 10% of your customers is willing to pay for more leg space, can you get by w…
You would travel in reduced comfort for a year, however small the difference, to get the latest samsung/iphone?
Also one man’s “reduced comfort” is another man’s “less luxury”. People make those choices all the times, e.g. when buying cars, train tickets, housing, or food.
If there's a 90% reduction in accidents, who will be providing the donor organs? What will happen to the average lifespan of people with certain chronic illnesses?
Are you truly suggesting we allow young, healthy individuals to die in car accidents to harvest their organs? You should be asking yourself what will happen to the average lifespan of those who won't die prematurely in a car accident.
But that doesn't stop me from wanting to know what the US will look like in a future with self-driving cars. Will we, for example, find such a severe shortage of donor hearts that certain unlucky people live less long? Will we prioritize research that could improve treatment diseases which, untreated, lead to organ transplants? Or will we consider changing laws to allow donors to be compensated for organ transplants? (which have all kinds of icky side effects but could help avert a crisis if there were one).
I genuinely don't know what the effects of fewer road deaths will be on transplant wait times and wonder how this externality (if there is one) will be handled.