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How Uber Got Lost

nytimes.com

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Re: How Uber Got Lost

#81

Post by ghaff »

ma2rten wrote: post #38
dumbfoundded wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber really has no advantage to self-driving. A customer network doesn't mean much if you cannot finance actually building the cars. They also don't any training data to give them a tech advantage. It'd make way more sense for an existing car company to build the features into the car and let the owner rent out the car when they don't need it. (Telsa, GM/Cruise). Another option is to simply build the best technology…

I don't think see the point of owning a car, if it's used by other people for most the day. I think there is going to be a big company that owns most cars. Uber could raise the capital for it on the stock market. The problem that I see is that Uber doesn't have the technology. In a world where self driving cars are a commodity, Uber's brand could be an advantage. But in reality, by the time Uber gets access to the te…

I'm not sure even the finances would work out.

So you have an asset--your car--that let's just assume you're fine with it being something economical to drive and you don't need to keep a bunch of personal stuff in it. Now you rent it out.

So you're in the single vehicle fleet management business. Your asset depreciates mostly on a per mile basis. (Not entirely but a good first approximation.) Say 50 cents a mile cost (including fuel). EV eventually brings this down but who knows what incremental hardware will be required for autonomy.

So two possible outcomes here.

One is that reimbursement costs drop to near operating cost. Some people will want to borrow from their future selves or will figure that their costs are enough below the average to make it work. In any case, it's not a great deal for the car owner.

The other is that reimbursement costs somehow embed a nice profit for the car owner. In this case, why on earth wouldn't the sort of companies that manage car fleets today get into the business, especially given that they can do things like maintenance less expensively than an individual.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#82

Post by sokoloff »

CydeWeys wrote: post #71
dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

"It's almost impossible to stop competitors in ride-sharing because the cost of switching for customers is low, there are no legal or capital ex competitive barriers, and you can be picked apart city by city." This is so true. I only ever take rideshare to/from airports, and those trips are sufficiently expensive that it makes sense for me to spend the extra minute to launch the four different ridesharing apps I have…

I was the "only has Uber" ride share user for a long time. Then I landed at Orlando and Uber was going to be $60+ for a 15 minute ride. Even though my company was paying for it, that was BS and I added Lyft on the spot. Lyft now gets probably 70% of my rides.

That afternoon was a very costly surge for Uber.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#83

Post by Kye »

rokhayakebe wrote: post #44
dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

Winner Takes “All” is an incomplete sentence. All what? All profits or all losses?

It's an English expression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winner-take-all_market

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#84

Post by sokoloff »

freehunter wrote: post #79
jfoster wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's so easy to compete, why aren't there more competitors with a larger market share? I don't know of any ride share market with more than two major players. US: Uber / Lyft South East Asia: Grab / GoJek Australia: Mainly just Uber (lots of smaller players but none with very significant market share)

It's easy to compete with the company, but hard to compete with the VC money Uber pulls in. Uber's only competitive advantage is the $24b they were given to keep them alive. If VCs keep funding Uber, Uber is unstoppable. But as soon as that money runs out, they're just another taxi company. Except they're a taxi company who loses $350 million dollars every month. That's not hard to compete against.

Or are they a taxi company that makes $100MM/month and spends $450MM on R&D that they could stop if they aspired to only be a taxi company?

(I think UBER is comically over-valued, but I also think their core business is probably quite profitable.)

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#85

Post by tomp »

goatinaboat wrote: post #59
jrockway wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. I'm not sure they've thought it through all the way. They're not sick today, so they don't need health insurance. Their car is new and doesn't need any major work, so the finances of eventually having to replace their car don't matter. Basically, I fear that we're getting the low prices we get by mortgaging the future. One day, your dr…

They're not sick today, so they don't need health insurance In the U.K. they’re not sick today so they don’t need the NHS so they don’t mind that Uber pays no Employer’s NI.

Employer NI is a scam anyways - some government or another needed more money, but didn't want to piss off the populace by raising taxes, so they increased taxes "invisibly" - you still get paid the same (as specified in your contract), you're just suddenly more expensive to the employer.

Also, if self-employed people pay less tax than employees, that's not their fault. Again, it's a tax avoidance scam primarily perpetuated by the government (guess why? so that the lawmakers and/or their proteges can pay less tax themselves!). People respond to incentives, as they should.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#86

Post by batbomb »

jfoster wrote: post #68
dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

If it's so easy to compete, why aren't there more competitors with a larger market share? I don't know of any ride share market with more than two major players. US: Uber / Lyft South East Asia: Grab / GoJek Australia: Mainly just Uber (lots of smaller players but none with very significant market share)

Uber is worldwide - I’ve used it on 4 continents. I actually signed up for it when in South Africa.

Considering they sold their business to Grab, I think you could safely say Uber+Grab are as close to a global service as you can get, and probably represents a significant fraction (though maybe not 50%+) of the global market

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#88

Post by [deleted] »

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #9

I feel deeply uncomfortable taking Ubers, especially in Seattle. The drivers are inevitably working class folk, just trying to scrape by. They inevitably mention the increasing rent and cost of living. They inevitably ask what I do and I have to respond that I'm one of the asshole carpetbagging tech people who come in and raise the cost of living, raise the rent. Services like Uber are placing the class barrier front…

[deleted]

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#89

Post by freehunter »

sokoloff wrote: post #84
freehunter wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy to compete with the company, but hard to compete with the VC money Uber pulls in. Uber's only competitive advantage is the $24b they were given to keep them alive. If VCs keep funding Uber, Uber is unstoppable. But as soon as that money runs out, they're just another taxi company. Except they're a taxi company who loses $350 million dollars every month. That's not hard to compete against.

Or are they a taxi company that makes $100MM/month and spends $450MM on R&D that they could stop if they aspired to only be a taxi company? (I think UBER is comically over-valued, but I also think their core business is probably quite profitable.)

In this situation I don't think it really matters. If the VC money stopped, Uber would either go out of business or shrink back down to being a taxi company, in which case they have no competitive advantage and no network effects, making switching costs extremely low.

Being a more profitable taxi company doesn't mean much when most of your employees are also employees of your competitors, and most of your customers are also customers of your competitors. There's just no lock-in.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#90

Post by sokoloff »

jrockway wrote: post #57
cactus2093 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil is a little extreme. The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. To add in some more anecdotal stories — the only times I really take a lot of Ubers and talk to the drivers are when traveling, and I’ve found the opposite. In Austin and Portland recently I talked to quite a few drivers that were happy with the job. And they all mentioned the flexible hours as a perk. One guy w…

> The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. I'm not sure they've thought it through all the way. They're not sick today, so they don't need health insurance. Their car is new and doesn't need any major work, so the finances of eventually having to replace their car don't matter. Basically, I fear that we're getting the low prices we get by mortgaging the future. One day, your dr…

> We need to understand the true cost of someone's time and materials and make sure we pay that for the ride.

No, they need to understand the cost of their time and materials (IMO). It's not my role to ensure that every counterparty to every transaction is getting the best of it. If my supermarket charges too little for lettuce, my gas station too little for unleaded-87, or my cafeteria too little for the lunch special, I'm not going to spend a millisecond trying to dig into (or just imagine) their financials to protect them.

That point aside, I've spoken with many Uber and Lyft drivers; most seem to have a very firm grasp on the numbers and believe it's advantageous for them. (Presumably, the ones who don't think it's a good idea are vastly less likely to be the one driving me around at that moment.) I'd say fewer than 10% of them have the naive "my only expense is gas; I'm crushing it today!" attitude that so many Uber opponents seem to ascribe to them.

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