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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

#441

Post by nrb »

VintageLight wrote: post #262
xyzzyz wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that in most places where cab are operating, you could order a cab to pick you up at your house by calling a cab company and talking to the operator? Flagging down a cab as it drives by is a New York City thing.

I recently spent a weekend in a major city without Uber/Lyft. Trying to call a cab company was terrible, relative to the user experience of Uber or Lyft. After making my request, a few cab companies simply answered "Ok" before hanging up. I called them back to get an ETA, and their dispatchers would give me answers like "30 to 40 minutes" or "I don't know". I wasn't out in the boonies or anything. I was downtown.

Many major cities have a universal dispatch number you can call and you get the next available cab from any available company.

Chicago did not have this, and when Uber offered UberTaxi it really was the best of both worlds, for a small surcharge on the normal cab fare.

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

#442

Post by fh973 »

rightbyte wrote: post #352
AdrianB1 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you want to have a huge and complex system. If you have small and localized ones, it should be very cheap.

Ye, like one VM running per city or region. I feel they are just sinking money into software and administration of software.

WhatsApp has shown that you can actually build large-scale system infrastructures very efficiently. And they had global service, Uber could profit from sharding as you suggest.

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

#443

Post by quotemstr »

malandrew wrote: post #435
nugget wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the big outstanding macro questions is how these businesses perform in a recession. If (or when) an inevitable contraction occurs, how quick are millennials to trade a daily uber eats habit for weekly groceries and meal prep at home.

This industry has already been exposed to a recession. You just need to let your mind think beyond US borders.

Details?

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

#444

Post by semi-extrinsic »

refurb wrote: post #193
standardUser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between taxi fares and Uber/Lyft fares has all but vanished. People were willing to pay taxi rates all along, now they are doing so and getting what is arguably a much better service.

I agree with this. Even if rates went up to what cabs were (still cheaper in SF in my experience), I wouldn't switch back to cabs. I'd still user Uber/Lyft for the convenience and higher quality product.

I'm confused about people mentioning "higher quality product" and others sharing stories about riding in cars with big holes in the floor, drivers peeing in bottles, etc.

Are those stories very uncommon, or does the cab market in SF etc. manage to be even less quality?

Round here, a cab is at worst an 8 year old Toyota Prius, at best a new Mercedes or a Tesla, and the cab companies all have apps that let you book rides and see where the car picking you up is right now.

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

#445

Post by josteink »

kickopotomus wrote: post #249
jonknee wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way they survive as such a richly valued company perhaps, my point is they could provide the current level of service with vastly lower spending and be a sustainable company. The financial problems aren't they charge too little for rides, it's that they have thousands of people working on bullshit that brings in little to nothing.

Sorry, but I have to disagree. R&D is the life blood of a tech company. Some problems are hard. Hard problems take a lot of time and money to solve. If they spend $2B solving a problem that allows them to make $10B in revenue long term, I would say that is a worthwhile investment, wouldn't you? Frankly, the R&D spend is the least of their worries. They recently trimmed some fat from their marketing department[1] but…

> R&D is the life blood of a tech company.

Uber is not a tech company. It’s a taxi-company with a fancy app.

There’s literally no reason their operating expenses should be this big.

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

#446

Post by goatinaboat »

Udik wrote: post #268
paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"R&D" usually includes all engineering expenses on financial reports, which for a company like Uber is the vast majority of operating expenses.

Can I ask something that will sound incredibly naive? How complicated needs to be an IT infrastructure that lets you book a taxi via an app and pay the driver? Is it really something to throw billions at each year? Sometimes I feel these companies are throwing billions in IT simply because they're expected to be disruptive technology companies, and not for real technical reasons.

It doesn’t!

You can read here on HN how their large IT staff spends most of its time migrating back and forth between MySQL and Postgres.

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

#447

Post by goatinaboat »

kickopotomus wrote: post #134
jonknee wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more the massive amount of spending they do with little to nothing to show for it. They spent $457m last year on autonomous and flying cars with $0 in revenue from those projects. Maybe that will work out, but I bet every penny was ultimately wasted. Not spending billions a year on R&D certainly makes the financials look nicer. It might not attract as nice of a multiple, but it's not the ride prices that…

R&D is the only way that they survive in the long term. Uber's entire plan is just to keep hemorrhaging money until autonomous vehicles come online. They just did not expect that to be as hard of a problem as it has turned out to be.

But if autonomous vehicles are ever a thing, where does Uber actually add value? Wouldn’t Tesla etc just “cut out the middleman” and capture that value themselves?

Also Uber as a company has zero experience of owning and maintaining a fleet of vehicles. They’ve entirely sidestepped that problem. What evidence is there they can do it better than anyone who does do it, like say Hertz?

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

#448

Post by kcanini »

matchbok wrote: post #430
BeetleB wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Counterpoint: I think most people would gladly pay a bit more to not have to deal with the annoyance of only being able to use strangers' cars, of variable cleanliness, only after waiting several minutes for them to show up, and not being able to store anything in them during multi-stop trips.

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

#449

Post by BeetleB »

matchbok wrote: post #430
BeetleB wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>Parking in most cities is pain. Driving to restaurants or bars is a no-go with your own vehicle.

I'm not sure whether you're referring to driving under the influence or merely about parking. If the latter: In most cities in the US, these are mostly non-issues. So I disagree with your use of "most". Although I've used Lyft in the last few years for various reasons, only once did I use it because I was worried about not finding parking. For other occasions, I used public transit. But seriously - probably less than once a year do I need to find alternate transportation because I'm worried about parking.

(BTW, I forgot to add parking to the above estimate. I spent on average $6.03 a month on it).

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

#450

Post by whenchamenia »

matchbok wrote: post #430
BeetleB wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I find a car to give more flexability than it takes. Its simple to pickup friends, do errands, with no scheduling or waiting. This doubtlessly depends on your area. Most people here assume everyone is in urban california fauxtopia.
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