If there is enough demand. So if people stop buying cars and rely on Uber then maybe.
Can Uber ever make money?
361–370 of 430 posts
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of drivers are acting irrationally (in the economic sense). The number of miles you put on driving for a car service will almost certainly be consequential to your car’s service life, if you are making any money at it. But, new drivers see cash in their bank account every week, and it’s hard to link that to having to splash out $25k for a new car down the road. I expect a lot of these drivers will bow out when…
Not exactly. This theory applies steady state analysis to a transient problem. Those drivers need money now. And are willing to trade off miles for money, in some sense. They are able to leverage their time and mileage to get income, which they might not otherwise have. They may already have invested in buying the car so that is a sunk cost. In some sense they are just extracting the value of the car combined with th…
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Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Option 4: Uber uses the expertise, infrastructure, and brand it built in ridesharing to expand into the becoming the de facto standard for timely last mile delivery. This is why UberEats is such a major strategic focus for the company. It's proof of concept that they can do more than be a taxi. An efficient platform for quickly and cheaply ferrying around stuff around town is a way bigger market than ridesharing. We'…
Courier services have existed for years for last mile. I have a friend who was (20 years ago) paid full time by one law office to get papers to/from the court room (he worked for a company that dedicated him to that job). Part of his job was knowing the proper way to walk into a trial in progress. My dad more than once hired a taxi to take a package to the airport. I suspect post 9-11 this isn't legally allowed, but…
I don’t think the “Mr Package” option has been available for a very long time, well before 9/11. I vividly remember in the 1990s being delayed for an hour at the gate while they dug around the cargo hold in search of somebody’s checked bag who didn’t show up to board the flight.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> very few people would say that a "healthy" labor market has no minimum wage or discrimination protections ... Unfortunately, you're talking to one of those few people. I'm against government mandating minimum wages or mandatory maternity/paternity leave. If you want those things, you can try to negotiate for it. > customers already seem not thrilled with surge pricing This is a true statement, but I wonder about th…
Government mandate minimum wages and mandatory parental leave are the result of people having negotiated for them.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#365Earlier 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.
> 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…
Speaking from my own experience though, for the few times I was in London, the driver would need the zip code to drive from airport to the home stay.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#366Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the innovation for you is something that has existed elsewhere before? Why is that innovative?
...the innovation is a consistent more reliable and timely experience, consistent across geographies, where it did not exist before. McDonalds didn’t have the first burger franchise, the innovation is very much in the reliability of an experience that is a better fit for the needs of the consumer than the alternatives. I too avoided booking taxis due to bad dispatchers, even though I’m sure some good dispatchers exis…
This
> ...the innovation is a consistent more reliable and timely experience, consistent across geographies, where it did not exist before.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
The roads are already clogged with cars. Does it matter if they are ride shares or not?
A saturated Uber-model ride share market is one where an empty car is seconds away whenever you need one. Idle ride shares matter a lot.
Or it could be a model where there is always a car with a ride share available.
I mean could it be the Uber Go model is the best win-win for the customers, Uber and the drivers?
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now for the million dollar question - how is this different to a ponzi scheme?
It isn't JUST a ponzi scheme, but to some degree it sure seems like it is in part a ponzi scheme. Public investors pay back VCs and the entreprenuer and then get shafted. Actually, let's work through the Wikipedia definition line by line. > A Ponzi scheme ... is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors.[2] One distinction that could be made is th…
The dividends that are paid by the company are the ones that differentiate a public company shares from a ponzi scheme. In a Ponzi scheme, the earnings are from future investors money but there is no concept of dividends ... where one earns based on how the company is actually performing.
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always thought this should be a "swipe left / swipe right" thing for both driver & passenger. If they both indicate they want to chat, talk away.
Or you can use the voice activated option with the driver. You just need to say “I’m feeling pretty tired right now and don’t feel like chatting”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Here are some things you can ask me.”
Re: Can Uber ever make money?
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same thing that largely keeps them from operating dealers (yes, now there are laws and contracts, but it was the manufacturers who wanted dealers in the first place) and rental car companies. Although there are legal impediments, companies often want to focus on a specific part of the value chain rather than having to own the whole thing.
Silvercar was recently acquired by Audi, so that's an example of a auto manufacturer running an car rental business.
All auto manufacturers have stakes to ride hailing apps if not outright owning one or more of them.