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Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#421

Post by Finbarr »

ttul wrote: post #82
Finbarr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to commute from San Mateo to San Francisco on Uber Pool for ~$10 each way. Same service is >$20 now.

That’s a distance of 32km. Assuming a fully loaded $0.50 per km cost to operate a private vehicle, the cost should be $16.00 each way assuming that you are the driver. By charging $4.00 more than the cost, you’re freeing yourself up to do other things during that time. Is your time really not worth $4.00?

Time is definitely extremely valuable, which is why I don’t commute anymore.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#422

Post by BeetleB »

bluetidepro wrote: post #50
izzydata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

You also have to factor in gas, renting a parking space for the car at home AND at work, taxes, insurance, convenience, etc. It's one of those things like renting. Yeah, in the long run, purely financially, buying would probably be cheaper, but a lot more factors go into it in real life that doesn't make it as black and white. For me, not owning a car is still much better overall, currently. Also, as I mentioned in a…

I'll bite.

I keep track of all my numbers. For the 86 months I had my last car, I paid an average of $236/mo.

This includes purchase price (subtracting out the amount I sold it for). Insurance. Taxes/fees. Gas. Auto insurance. Repairs and maintenance. Silly things like car washes.

Of course, I didn't buy a brand new car, or even a recent car. And bought a reliable brand so repairs were low. My insurance was not just liability. All apartments I lived in had parking, as did my work. The types of apartments that have expensive parking are the type that have high rents anyway, so I save in both by not living there.

Excluded is the gas for road trips, but I think that's fair as I doubt you used Lyft/Uber for road trips.

So for less than what you're paying a month, I got to have a car, and got to drive anywhere I wanted to - not just work.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#423

Post by aiddun »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #8

Uber and lyft are both on the way down. The price at which they need to operate to be profitable is not a price that most americans are ready to pay. As simple as that. For now they delay this reality by subsidizing rides in order to generate business. In some cities like San Francisco, most incentives were removed and among my friends we all stopped using Uber (unless we really have to). It simply became way too exp…

Same thing happened with Via in NYC. They used to offer $5 flat rides to anywhere in Manhattan, now prices for the most part are variable and sometimes much more. It was unfortunately too good to be true. They offer a subscription pass that can use pre-tax dollars but for me personally it's not the same.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#424

Post by Tiktaalik »

catacombs wrote: post #23
rainyMammoth wrote: post #8

Uber and lyft are both on the way down. The price at which they need to operate to be profitable is not a price that most americans are ready to pay. As simple as that. For now they delay this reality by subsidizing rides in order to generate business. In some cities like San Francisco, most incentives were removed and among my friends we all stopped using Uber (unless we really have to). It simply became way too exp…

> among my friends we all stopped using Uber (unless we really have to). It simply became way too expensive. What's been the alternative? Regular taxis? Aren't they just as expensive?

In Vancouver where Uber/Lyft has never been allowed car sharing services Car2go and Evo (local) are very popular. Open an app, reserve a car parked nearby, get directions to it, then drive it to where you want to go. Park it wherever.

There's also (gasp) public transit (and bike share).

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#425

Post by sedachv »

xster wrote: post #229
coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

I think this is what worries me about the "mainstream" debate that might be incorrectly framing the whole problem altogether. Here, the rise of the gig economy came from automation. Not in the caricature sense that there are robot automatons that serve your plates in a restaurant, but in a sense that scalable automated processes replaced human dispatchers that answers your phone calls at the taxi companies and radios…

> But the solution isn't to break them up and for society to become unproductive and un-automated again by forcing minimum wage, health insurance, guaranteed menial jobs etc.

I don't know if you know anything about 1990s-early 2000s artificial intelligence research, but the vision of the future back then was artificial agents communicating through standardized protocols to negotiate for goods and services.[1] So, a decentralized dispatching system. What you are saying is false dichotomy monopolist propaganda. There is no technical reason why the only choice is between Uber and manual dispatching.

[1] I spent a few summers as a research assistant working on multi-agent systems. Feel free to object with "but, it's not technically feasible because X, Y, Z." I can probably refute most technical reasons and provide a good explanation.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#426

Post by kbenson »

pault wrote: post #301
kbenson wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber and Lyft did the hard work of making ride-sharing mainstream, but there's really very little they have to offer other than name recognition) over any other player that tries to enter this play. I still strongly believe that some aggregating service like Expedia, Travelocity or Kayak for ride sharing the treats Uber, Lyft or any other player in the market as the equivalent of an airline would work fine in the vas…

In Austin we have smaller ride share services that were able to thrive when Uber and Lyft got kicked out temporarily. They only charged the drivers $1.00 per ride instead of 25%. Such a deal can only be dreamed of since Uber and Lyft came back and crushed all the small players like flies. In my opinion this is not a service that requires billion dollar companies to exist. I would love to see an open source suite of s…

You know, I also often think about (and have mentioned here) how it seems like an open stack or API of some sort could handle this, and I also used the Austin services back in 2013 when I visited for YAPC. I think it was the first time I ever installed an app to call a ride. I wonder how much that also shaped how I see the industry as it developed.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#427

Post by magpi3 »

jjeaff wrote: post #349
chucksmash wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point do I simply say "fuck it" and stop working too, because some ridiculous percentage of my income has to be applied towards feeding those who won't/can't/don't do anything productive? Econ 101 opinion here, so I'm ignoring totally reasonable things like "people work for reasons other than monetary compensation" and assuming you're a rational participant in the economy, but I'd say there is no percentage…

There is a big factor that you are missing when it come to huge taxes. And that is the fact that people, especially the wealthy, are mobile. Tax the wealthiest 0.01% at 99% and watch how fast they leave the country for low tax regions. It already happens with people like the Facebook cofounder that renounced US citizenship.

I hear this a lot. I will believe it when I see it. Silicon Valley is crazy expensive. Why do people go there? Why don't the wealthy of Silicon Valley live someplace cheaper?

Because that is where the action and the talent is. It's not just about money and cost of living.

Also the 0.01 are so absurdly wealthy many are pledging to give away their money. They are not going to move away from their homeland because they are taxed more.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#428

Post by BeetleB »

dougmwne wrote: post #79
izzydata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

Using Edmunds' True Cost to Own calculator, A 2014 Honda Civic would cost about 5k per year or $416/Mo. If you don't get free parking at work or home or if you have to pay tolls, that cost could increase significantly. A parking spot at a condo could rent for $200-$400/Mo. Parking downtown could be $12-$20 per day. That daily Uber ride sounds like a deal.

>A 2014 Honda Civic would cost about 5k per year or $416/Mo.

You can see my numbers here for my Civic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20650989

Mine was 8 years old when I bought it, but with low miles (about 60K). So I paid a bit of a premium - almost as much as the 2014 Civic on that page. I kept it till it was at 144K miles. Effective cost to own was under $300/mo.

Comparing the 2014 numbers with mine:

Insurance is almost the same.

Repairs + Maintenance was less than a third of their estimate. I didn't skimp at all on this, BTW. I'd be worried if a 5 year old Civic has that many repairs!

No financing - paid in cash. Even the 2014 one is a little over $10K. You can just save and pay cash.

Their estimate requires a lot more in fuel costs. Mine is about two thirds of their estimate. This can be highly variable (e.g. if you have a long commute).

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#429

Post by nemonemo »

dcchambers wrote: post #137

Oof. This doesn't look good no matter how you shake it. I wonder how long the investors go on before saying "enough is enough." I don't have a horse in this race, but if Uber/Lyft fail there are going to be substantial societal repercussions. Admit it or not, they have disrupted the transportation industry significantly.

The one who fails later could get the market share and monopolistic power. The void will be filled as soon as it gets created. That is how the market economy normally works.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#430

Post by matchbok »

BeetleB wrote: post #422
bluetidepro wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to factor in gas, renting a parking space for the car at home AND at work, taxes, insurance, convenience, etc. It's one of those things like renting. Yeah, in the long run, purely financially, buying would probably be cheaper, but a lot more factors go into it in real life that doesn't make it as black and white. For me, not owning a car is still much better overall, currently. Also, as I mentioned in a…

I'll bite. I keep track of all my numbers. For the 86 months I had my last car, I paid an average of $236/mo. This includes purchase price (subtracting out the amount I sold it for). Insurance. Taxes/fees. Gas. Auto insurance. Repairs and maintenance. Silly things like car washes. Of course, I didn't buy a brand new car, or even a recent car. And bought a reliable brand so repairs were low. My insurance was not just…

I think most people would gladly pay a bit more to not have to deal with the annoyance of owning a vehicle. Parking in most cities is pain. Driving to restaurants or bars is a no-go with your own vehicle. The flexibility you lose with having to own a car is simply not worth it.
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