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Can Uber ever make money?

economist.com

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Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#331

Post by yspeak »

fwip wrote: post #315
rossenberg79 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to do fares in the bad part of town is the reason my brother carries a loaded gun under his seat while driving for Uber.

Bringing a loaded gun with you is a good way to end up dead.

What how does that work logically or in reality ? Good guy has no gun, bad guy does, 100% good guy gets robbed, raped, kidnapped, or killed. Good guy has gun, bad guy runs away most of time or sometimes gets killed or captured or otherwise stopped some of time, or sometimes robs, rapes, or kills good guy despite good guy gun some of time. 100% of time I like the second scenario.

"Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies. ... Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008."cdc see https://www.investors.com/politics/columnists/how-many-lives...

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#332

Post by ttty »

lugg wrote: post #312
cyphar wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm left feeling like the fare - strictly from the perspective of a consumer - is actually too high. Not to mention personal risk if you consider how dangerous some Uber drivers are. However if you consider the cost of car maintenance, annual depreciation on a taxi-like vehicle, and petrol the fares are actually very low. I would be willing to bet that a lot of Uber drivers are wavering around breaking even on the…

The beauty of the uber model is that drivers don't even need to break even. Very few I speak to are doing it full time to make money. Most are doing it as a side hustle for a little extra cash before or after work. Or they're using the money to justify spending more on their dream car. They don't need to break even, they needed the car anyway, it would depreciate roughly the same amount anyway. Or at least the extra…

> Very few I speak to are doing it full time to make money.

Most of the guys make it to pick up girls. I know some girls that use to go by Uber and many guys would ask for their number.

For example they can't drive a Tesla for this cheap, makes no economic sense, except if it's another tinder for them.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#333

Post by freyr »

nospitate wrote: post #280
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…

You are just fundamentally wrong. There is a cost associated with operating the “dispatch,” operating the car and paying the employees/contractors. Take that cost, distribute it over the number of rides you expect to give to your customers and then add a little on top. The question is whether or not the customers will engage in that transaction or is the cost too high? Uber has plenty of fat to cut. If it were runnin…

There's making money, and there's making enough money to justify an $84B valuation.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#334

Post by geofft »

Simon_says wrote: post #268
kelnos wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, this is how supply and demand works in a healthy market. Riders should pay higher prices for tasks that drivers are less willing to do, and concomitantly drivers should get paid more for those tasks.

That's a "healthy" market in the sense of a liquid market with high levels of information communication. That's not necessarily the same thing as a "healthy" market in the sense of good public policy. For instance, very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections, trusting supply and demand to solve those adequately. Similarly, letting the market price trips to "bad" neighborhoods higher is probably undesirable, even if that's what a free market would do.

It also may not be the same thing as a market customers understand and feel comfortable participating in. It's true that there's more demand for unblemished produce priced the same as misshapen ones, but I'd be very unlikely to patronize a grocery store that ran an auction for each individual vegetable. So it might be in Uber's interest to not expose a variable-pricing mechanism. (Indeed, customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing, even though it arguably gets them the service they want more efficiently.)

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#335

Post by rblatz »

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.

I feel like it depends on the city. In Phoenix I typically get a relatively nice car with a fairly normal guy or girl that drives a relatively newer car as a side gig, or to keep busy during retirement.

Conversely in Columbus Ohio all the drivers I’ve had recently are clearly former taxi drivers that migrated to Uber. The cars are old and beat up, the insides are dirty, and the drivers disregard the app’s directions usually taking us to the wrong spot.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#337

Post by olalonde »

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…

You made quite a big claim in the first sentence but the rest of your comment doesn't explain it.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#338

Post by axaxs »

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.

But it's really not. At one time it was, but at least in my city, it's sanely priced. When I travel for work for example, an Uber takes my wife and child to school and back. The roundtrip time is about 15 minutes, and the cost is usually 12 to 14 dollars. That's at minimum 48 dollars per hour, which is the upper end of middle class here.

My most recent trip to SF, my ride from Berkley to Downtown each day was about 30 dollars for about a 30 minute trip. 60/hour doesn't sound absurd for that region.

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#339

Post by bariswheel »

The mouse changed the way we work, and it got commoditized. Just because a company was first to adopt and make a business out of a disruptive technology doesn't mean it's going to corner the market with it. In fact, history shows that it's not the best approach to be the first adopter of a technology (Kodak, Altavista, etc..)

Re: Can Uber ever make money?

#340

Post by cge »

cbhl wrote: post #136
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.

What are your thoughts on Uber Select / Uber Black / Lyft Lux / Lyft Lux Black?

Uber Black, at least for me, is not a good option because it usually (seemingly every time in LA) results in getting a giant SUV. These are not comfortable, and are not discreet, by comparison to good sedans.
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