291–300 of 430 posts
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>Call me a snob You're a snob. I wish they'd relax their policy on vehicles. I would have no problem riding in 90s shitboxes. I would find it novel. As long as it's been vacuumed that week I don't care what condition it's in.
They should add a tier of service so that you can choose as a rider.
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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…
Sure, but I wonder if this was the best way for it to happen. Couldn't we have gotten to taxi-hailing apps without allocating a bunch of capital to companies that might never turn a profit? I'm just curious. I don't personally care because my money isn't invested and my rides are subsidized by the people who did invest.
Autonomous cars will help but that won't happen for years, 5-10 maybe more. Additionally, if autonomy becomes a reality for Uber it will happen for other modes of transportation too so they will have to compete there too. That will be even harder since it's easier to get a bunch of cars working once the tech is available.
Also Uber will not survive as it stands now. Regulations and public pressure will eventually force it to conform to something similar to a very large cab company.
Every industry eventually gets hit by consolidation. A business of individual drivers can be even more profitable if it joins drivers into groups. They become more reliable, they cost less to maintain and they gain power that they can leverage against large industry actors. Maybe then, it will become profitable. But that won't happen until the industry matures.
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As it stands the price you pay for a ride in an uber is unfairly low. Driving it even lower would be irresponsible.
Says you. That sounds awesome to me! How about we let consumers decide what the right "price" is? If you don't like it, then you should feel free to use the higher priced/quality alternatives!
No, in its current state, they can't be profitable. Other transportation options will become more desirable if Uber had to truly charge what it costs to transport a customer so for now and the near future they have to subsidize the rides which kills the possibility of profit. Autonomous cars will help but that won't happen for years, 5-10 maybe more. Additionally, if autonomy becomes a reality for Uber it will happen…
I do really feel like Waymo will prove successful in specific environments THIS year and increment slowly, and eventually our transportation habits will change to better utilize a cheaper, safer form of transportation.
But I wouldn't be surprised if I'm still saying that ten years from now.
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…
They've run over local governments to get their cars into the highly regulated taxi industry and basically operate under their own rules so I have no doubt they can operate anti-competitively too.
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> 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…
The problem there is twofold: 1) Many drivers from your town would likely geofence themselves to your town, reducing the supply of drivers that will drive to the metro area, increasing wait times and driving up prices, making riders unhappy. 2) Drivers would use this feature to avoid driving to "bad" parts of town, making transportation discriminatory. (In ways that are illegal for traditional taxi companies, so Uber…
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That's like investing in Yahoo in the .com bubble. Uber and Lyft's only asset is the interface between the customer and the driver, not self-driving cars. It's very easy for someone to come up with an app to order a robotic taxi. This is probably the easiest part of the robotic taxi business. It's so much so, that unless Uber or Lyft's service is essentially "free," a robotic taxi business will probably consider the…
I agree, but will it work? If customers stubbornly pull out their lyft app despite the discounts...
Uber isn't in the taxi business, it's in the self-driving car business. Taxis with drivers are just a stopgap, just like DVD's were a stopgap for Netflix. The Economist is right that there are few real network effects or moats around the taxi business. But Uber's valuation depends on it: - Developing the best driverless tech - Being able to roll driverless taxis out to an established customer base faster and at far l…
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If self-driving technology is mature enough to be used and there are several implementations to choose from, what stops care manufacturers to go after that market directly and undercutting everyone else? * They have industrial facilities to build cars * They have dealership networks to repair cars * They have capital or can borrow easily to do it I can even argue that all that stops car manufacturers from operating t…
As a sibling comment noted, that is Telsa's plan. I believe GM is wanting to do something similar with Cruise. However, I feel that both of those companies are still way behind Waymo in terms of R&D. Personally, I think that Waymo is the one to watch. If they get their first, they already have the ride hailing infrastructure/user network in place (Google Maps) and may even license the tech out to auto manufacturers.