Prices have been more expensive than traditional taxis in my market for over a year now.
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Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
21–30 of 321 posts
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#22Pretty crazy with Juul, WeWork, DoorDash, and Uber / Lyft all struggling (or showing their true colors) that all the things they sought to kill are coming back. Taxis, cigarettes, picking up your own food! It's amazing to me that people were having food delivered from a half mile away.
They weren’t try to kill anything, they just wanted a piece of the action.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#23This is untrue. Without a doubt, with autonomous vehicles, efficient energy usage, storage and harvest via non eco damaging sources like solar power, the cost of rides will get cheaper.
Costs don't dictate prices.
They do indirectly. A big gap between costs and prices invites competition, which lowers prices. Part of the "play" that ride sharing companies are making is building a moat around themselves so that they'll be able to discourage competition for a while.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you assume that cost isn't being subsidized? Uber and Lyft are both still hemorrhaging money. I'm willing to bet the real cost is at least twice what you mentioned. Yesterday it cost me $30 to go 5 miles via Uber, and I chose that over Lyft's $40. Not a busy time of day so no price surging. This is in San Francisco for a frame of reference.
How much would it be renting a car for a day in that area?
I own a car so it's not an issue of cost but convenience. Driving downtown is just not worth it (a broken window will ruin your weekend). I bought a car for leaving the city, not for going into the city.
I'd imagine renting the car is cheaper before you take into account parking, time, and potential theft. Car break-ins here are so bad people have become blasé about it. I went looking for a news story (there are many about how problematic property crimes are in SF) but found this instead:
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#25Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#26"When will these darlings of Silicon Valley begin to turn a profit?" The funny thing is criticism of these two companies has been vociferous on Hacker News since the very beginning. I'm not sure what company I'd even call a darling. Every example I can think of FAANG, Dropbox, Slack, etc all have various criticisms. Perhaps Spotify? But it's not a Silicon Valley company.
I've been on a SharkTank binge just for fun, and one thing I notice is, every time a Silicon Valley company goes to pitch, the idea has some pretty bad problems:
1. The margin is high but the idea is easily copied
2. A ton of money has already been invested, and still not making money
3. Other things I can't remember at this moment
I think SV has some sort of problem when it comes to starting businesses. Rarely something is organically growing. It's like SV people just throw money at a wall until something sticks, so it explains the thousands of failure companies.
Seeing SV companies through the eyes of an investor, I'd be ultra cautious. Companies and ideas are a dime a dozen there from what I see. Until you find out each has had +$100,000 pumped into it various ways and operating at a loss. It's almost like they want to force you to think the idea is good because "look, it's existed for X years!".
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#27> more precisely predict what riders might be willing to pay for a ride
It's weird to me that this sort of price discrimination is legal.
E.g. given this information, my incentive as a rider is to never tip (so that their algorithm doesn't identify me as "willing to pay" more). Maybe I could also make a new Lyft account every time I need a ride?
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#28This article’s a couple months old, so it misses what I think is going to be a lot more definitive against Uber/Lyft.
That is, workers are starting to successfully unionize. Both companies have delayed it as long as possible, but it’s going to happen. And when it does, it will either burn more of their cash or up the customer cost.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#29> more precisely predict what riders might be willing to pay for a ride It's weird to me that this sort of price discrimination is legal. E.g. given this information, my incentive as a rider is to never tip (so that their algorithm doesn't identify me as "willing to pay" more). Maybe I could also make a new Lyft account every time I need a ride?
> > more precisely predict what riders might be willing to pay for a ride
> It's weird to me that this sort of price discrimination is legal.
I don't interpret this as charging different customers different prices per se. But there are different prevailing conditions with different pricing justified (other than simple congested/not congested). Knowing what your service is worth to customers so you can extract a greater fraction of this is pricing 101.
Re: Uber and Lyft Suggest the Days of Cheap Rides Could Be Over
#30I'd say, once people stop dumping money into these companies and they can no longer operate at a loss, the real price of a ride/delivery will become clear.
It's a reasonable working assumption that "ride share" prices end up somewhere around where taxi prices are--with the possible exception of places like London where black cabs are somewhat of a premium service relative to minicabs, etc.
I don’t see how the Uber model can ever approach the price of a taxi. Traditional taxis had purpose-built vehicles, shared garages, parts bought at wholesale, and cars on duty all day every day. Uber drivers have disposable Toyotas, pay individually retail prices for insurance, maintenance, and parts, and their vehicles are usually parked. The traditional model has the advantage on cost.