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Can Uber ever make money?

economist.com

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Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#211

Post by cabaalis »

rubicon33 wrote: post #97
Skunkleton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> drivers often don't know the neighborhood and rely exclusively on GPS

I drove for Uber about 3 years ago for a couple of months when getting my consultancy off the ground, which led to my current gig.

If I had a way to tell Uber "Don't give me rides that require me to leave a given geofence--we'll all have a bad time." Then I'd have been much, much happier. Everyone wanted a ride from my suburban town to the metro area that I know nothing about. Every now and then I'd get one where start point and endpoint were both my own town.

I'd have happily taken less fares in order to drive more familiar streets, and the people who rode with me would have enjoyed it more.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#212

Post by joncrane »

quickben wrote: post #70
dcolkitt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure is. But remember, that playbook's almost exactly how Amazon became the largest company in the world.

AWS lock-in is different from a taxi app. Only a few players so far managed to respond to AWS in scale and offerings. Lots of taxi companies have their own apps at this point.

The comment you're replying to means the original Amazon business model of selling things online.

Pretty sure AWS was profitable almost from day 1.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#213

Post by mruts »

I would say.. no?

The optimal solution would be an exchange that provided order books with bid/asks for each passanger and driver.

Alternatively you could have a real-time auction to make it easier for the passanger.

The exchange could take a 5-10% cut on each ride.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#214

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #177
jfim wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically, it does lead to a competition equilibrium, but it does not take into account the cost of externalities such as additional traffic and pollution generated by having more drivers.

At appropriate saturation the number of cars being displaced by riders is significant, though I wonder what that is and how it trends over time. If I was in college today, I might never consider buying a vehicle.

No. What happens is that roads keep becoming saturated until they are clogged with ride shares and the riders bail out when they realize they can walk faster. The equilibrium point creates complete havoc for everyone else and little productive work is actually done.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#215

Post by harryf »

skywhopper wrote: post #15

There is literally no way for a mass-market taxi service to make money unless they have a monopoly, or some unexpected disruptive technology comes along that gives one company an unassailable advantage in lowering costs. The Uber app was the original innovation, but it's not particularly innovative anymore. Besides Lyft, traditional taxi companies have similar apps in some markets. Skirting regulation and good labor…

> The Uber app was the original innovation

No it wasn't. There were a ton of taxi related apps and startups before Uber and nothing about Uber's app was particularly impressive IP-wise - it's basically just distance search.

What Uber did that was unusual for a tech startup was to invest in lobbying - https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/14/7390395/uber-lobbying-st... - it allowed them to play across regulated markets where no one else had before.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#216

Post by GordonS »

rubicon33 wrote: post #97
Skunkleton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Combine that with the fact that the drivers often don't know the neighborhood

I used to travel to Houston quite a lot. Not sure if this is representative of taxis in general in the US, but the taxi drivers never knew the neighbourhood. I couldn't say "I want to go to Acme Stuff in X district", I had to give a "Cross road" (a very US thing, that) and the driver would use satnav based on that. It did seem that a lot of taxi drivers were recent immigrants (invariably chatty), so that accounts for some, but not all.

At first, this was a surprise, as in my native UK I can literally give a street name within 50 miles of where I am, and the driver cocks their head for a second, gears whir, and yes! They know it!

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#217

Post by Anderkent »

harryf wrote: post #215
skywhopper wrote: post #15

There is literally no way for a mass-market taxi service to make money unless they have a monopoly, or some unexpected disruptive technology comes along that gives one company an unassailable advantage in lowering costs. The Uber app was the original innovation, but it's not particularly innovative anymore. Besides Lyft, traditional taxi companies have similar apps in some markets. Skirting regulation and good labor…

> The Uber app was the original innovation No it wasn't. There were a ton of taxi related apps and startups before Uber and nothing about Uber's app was particularly impressive IP-wise - it's basically just distance search. What Uber did that was unusual for a tech startup was to invest in lobbying - https://www.theverge.com/2014/12/14/7390395/uber-lobbying-st... - it allowed them to play across regulated markets whe…

There were a ton of taxi related apps but none of them did what Uber did; at least in London. There were apps where you could book a taxi, telling them when and where to pick you up, but if you expected anyone to show up in the next 5 minutes you were crazy. And they were twice as expensive as uber, of course.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#218

Post by GordonS »

rubicon33 wrote: post #97
Skunkleton wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Uber's criteria for what qualifies as an acceptable car has dramatically declined to the point where even Taxis are sometimes "nicer"

In my travels to the US, which almost exclusively meant Houston, the taxis were always very basic, "boxy" cars; not sure about make/model, but they always felt "cheap".

Meanwhile in Europe, a lot of taxis are Mercedes E class saloons, or high-spec saloons from other makers.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#219

Post by IanCal »

monsieurbanana wrote: post #184
IanCal wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without the innovation of the Uber app, I had local services with an app before Uber, I'm sure. It's really not much of a shift from a phone call either. But then, all Uber cars are the same as private hire cans anyway here. It seems like the real innovation was being big enough to ignore the local rules. That and being able to say it's "ride sharing" with a straight face.

Hacker News about Dropbox (2007): "For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" Hacker News about Uber (2019): "It's really not much of a shift from a phone call either"

You have conveniently missed that there was already an app for ordering taxis before Uber for me.

Also, yes, it's not much of a shift. I'm not arguing people rebuild it or have something together but the shift from:

Call cab firm and say where you are

to

App calls cab firm and says where you are

is not massively innovative. (edit - particularly when it has been done before)

I know it's fun and cool to be snarky, but you have clearly missed what I've said and equated it to something wildly different. Please put a little more effort in to your comments to make them more useful.

The Dropbox comment is amusing because that's a complex thing users would have to do and doesn't support what Dropbox supports. Switching from one app to another is really quite different.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#220

Post by astrodust »

GordonS wrote: post #218
rubicon33 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Uber's criteria for what qualifies as an acceptable car has dramatically declined to the point where even Taxis are sometimes "nicer" In my travels to the US, which almost exclusively meant Houston, the taxis were always very basic, "boxy" cars; not sure about make/model, but they always felt "cheap". Meanwhile in Europe, a lot of taxis are Mercedes E class saloons, or high-spec saloons from other makers.

A taxi in Europe is akin to an "airport limo" in North America. The differences are astounding.
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