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Can Uber ever make money?

economist.com

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Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#91

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

microtherion wrote: post #65
bunderbunder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't fathom how. If you maintain a fleet of thousands of driverless cars, there are at least some economies of scale you can leverage: More negotiating power with your suppliers, the ability to purchase consumables like fuel and tires at wholesale prices, the ability to have your own in-house team of mechanics who can specialize in just your fleet, etc. If you crowdsource it, a lot of that stuff is going to have t…

> You might be able to hide from that by capitalizing on some information asymmetry, by paying the people you crowdsource cars from less money than it's costing them to let you use their cars People are notoriously bad at properly pricing the depreciation of their cars.

Until they starve, but P.T.Barnum covered that point.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#92

Post by googlemike »

perfmode wrote: post #35
tjpaudio wrote: post #34

I'm not quite sure everyone discussing this, including the economist article author, is in the loop with why Lyft and Uber are getting valued the way they are. Wall Street is not paying for a taxi company, they are betting that Uber and Lyft are the best poised to first rollout driverless ride sharing, i.e. one of them will own and monopolize patentable tech that the mass public wants to use. The existing experience…

Driverless ride sharing isn’t coming, in a meaningful way*, in the next ten years, I’m willing to bet my house on that. Meaningful such that it actually delivers monetarily

Happy to take that bet. How should we do it?

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#93

Post by pochamago »

What's the point of these speculative pieces that just list pros and cons? Give me actual projections, explore what it would take for them to be profitable. Otherwise it's just not that interesting

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#94

Post by hoschicz »

perfmode wrote: post #35
tjpaudio wrote: post #34

I'm not quite sure everyone discussing this, including the economist article author, is in the loop with why Lyft and Uber are getting valued the way they are. Wall Street is not paying for a taxi company, they are betting that Uber and Lyft are the best poised to first rollout driverless ride sharing, i.e. one of them will own and monopolize patentable tech that the mass public wants to use. The existing experience…

Driverless ride sharing isn’t coming, in a meaningful way*, in the next ten years, I’m willing to bet my house on that. Meaningful such that it actually delivers monetarily

Define "delivers monetarily" and I might be willing to take the other side of the bet.

What about Waymo in the Phoenix area? Yes, that's a limited and perfect area, but still, it works very well there.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#96

Post by lalos »

hannasanarion wrote: post #71
massung wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Option 4: sell your ride data to a 3rd party. Knowing who you are, where you travel to, what's around those areas. They - or a 3rd party - could advertise what's in the area you were taken to, track where you frequent and recommend riding to places you haven't been to in a while showing you what's "new" in those areas, etc. I don't Uber (and have only used Lyft once), so maybe they already do this or are planning to.

I can't imagine there's that much data to sell. I don't think a lot of people use uber on a daily basis, the takeaways are gonna be "people travel to and from airports close to them".

They can deduce a lot and not to mention Foursquare profits on selling check-in info to fin companies. Also, check this blog from Uber http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/blog/ubers-deleted-rides-of-gl... where they (with some confidence) deduce when someone was involved in one night stand.

Not to mention they have valuable information about you on how sensitive you are to price changes, who you interact with (sharing rides), what places you frequent (bars, gyms, churches, etc), places you travel and on what season. It's a goldmine and more by cross-referencing with other data sets. They can even know when you are sick if you get an Uber to the doctor or if you are friendly or not (drivers also review you) and how strict you are with other people (your reviews of drivers). It's all about the meta-data.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#97

Post by rubicon33 »

Skunkleton wrote: post #79
parksy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in a way, that's the beauty of disruptive use of technology. Without the innovation of the Uber app, the traditional taxi cartels would have no incentive to improve their services and the fact that they have been forced to do so in order to compete benefits the consumer. They're not quite there yet, and are still catching up. The next logical step is a lift aggregation service that creates a marketplace. I want a…

As it stands the price you pay for a ride in an uber is unfairly low. Driving it even lower would be irresponsible.

Call me a snob, but Uber's criteria for what qualifies as an acceptable car has dramatically declined to the point where even Taxis are sometimes "nicer". Combine that with the fact that the drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS (so tend to be worse drivers than a taxi).

I'm left feeling like the fare - strictly from the perspective of a consumer - is actually too high.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#98

Post by Traster »

JimboOmega wrote: post #78
rchaud wrote: post #74

Looking at Uber, WeWork, JustEat etc., I get the feeling there's a growing gap between what we were brought up to believe about entrepreneurship and innovation vs. what the reality is. We're all familiar with the '>50% of small businesses fail' stat (not the real number) and that we should be toiling and not taking a salary for years until we break even, i.e. reach a point where we're no longer losing money on every…

The question (with Uber in particular) is that if this business model really covers up a huge ponzi scheme. Before the last decade (or even 5 years?) the amount of money some of these companies have been raising would have been unheard of and required an IPO. But if you can keep finding ever bigger investors to give you ever more money... It's a really weird reality, because typically the worst kind of place to start…

I think that's a really interesting concept. People think Uber will reach a scale where either it can use automation to reduce costs or jack up prices. It may well be the other way around - as it matures regulations catch up and the loopholes it was using to keep costs down disappear and their costs slowly increase instead.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#99

Post by giarc »

bunderbunder wrote: post #38
TruthSHIFT wrote: post #7

Keep in mind that this may not change when driverless cars become widely available. Maintaining a fleet thousands of driverless cars may prove to be more expensive than crowdsourcing a vehicle fleet.

I can't fathom how. If you maintain a fleet of thousands of driverless cars, there are at least some economies of scale you can leverage: More negotiating power with your suppliers, the ability to purchase consumables like fuel and tires at wholesale prices, the ability to have your own in-house team of mechanics who can specialize in just your fleet, etc. If you crowdsource it, a lot of that stuff is going to have t…

>the ability to purchase consumables like fuel and tires at wholesale prices, the ability to have your own in-house team of mechanics who can specialize in just your fleet, etc.

But they don't purchase any of that stuff now, so doesn't matter if you get to economies of scale. I understand that when you remove the driver, a huge cost goes away, but it's replaced with having to own and maintain a vehicle.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#100

Post by anthonypasq »

rchaud wrote: post #74

Looking at Uber, WeWork, JustEat etc., I get the feeling there's a growing gap between what we were brought up to believe about entrepreneurship and innovation vs. what the reality is. We're all familiar with the '>50% of small businesses fail' stat (not the real number) and that we should be toiling and not taking a salary for years until we break even, i.e. reach a point where we're no longer losing money on every…

>The reality is that a VC-backed company can simply outprice any competitor

this assumes bad ideas get enough vc funding to do what uber is doing.

they dont.

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