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Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

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Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#101

Post by ashtonkem »

martythemaniak wrote: post #9

First, they were gonna make the jump to be an autonomous robotaxi service, but that's going nowhere fast. Then they were going to be mobility service - cars, bikes, scooters, everything would go through them. But no more. So what are they going to be now? Just milk their taxi service until Waymo, Tesla or whoever comes and wipes them off the market? Honestly, what are their long-term prospects? I've been staying away…

Scooters were just as dubious as their robo-taxi business. Bird has basically no path to profitability, there is no obvious reason why Uber would be able to turn a profit with scooters either, especially since Uber never had a deep operations bench.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#102

Post by baddox »

lhorie wrote: post #88
baddox wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are certainly some overly optimistic timelines being promised by some people and companies, but "several decades" seems extremely pessimistic. There are self-driving cars driving all over San Francisco (and presumably other cities) with minimal human driver intervention. I'm sure they're not perfect, and they might not be as good as whatever human driving ability baseline will be needed for mainstream and regul…

Several decades ago, I was hearing about flying cars. The technology existed for years. Commercial flight is a thing too, but 20 years later we're still no closer to having flying cars. Why would self driving cars be different?

I’m not sure I understand the argument. Surely you can’t conclude from the lack of flying cars that nothing will ever happen.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#103

Post by epistasis »

api wrote: post #86
epistasis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all the self-driving cars hysteria was just momentum from the hype of deep learning advances. I remember thinking about the idea of self driving cars within 10 years, "this seems crazy, but I guess I've been wrong before...". A few years later it seems even crazier. But I've also been wronger than that... There were (are?) people talking about Artificial General Intelligence being just around the corner, whic…

It's the sort of problem that is easily prone to extreme optimism extreme pessimism cycles. You get 90% of the way there and then the difficulty skyrockets . Getting to 95% is as hard as going from 0 to 90%. Getting to where you need to be for it to be mainstream is like 10-20X as hard as making an impressive looking proof of concept. Space flight is another thing like that. We were supposed to have manned flights to…

I like these analogies to other engineering challenges!

It's easy to make predictions when outside a field (and I'm guilty of this fallacy too), but easy to miss the true challenges. For example, a lot of people just assume that fusion reactors will be better than fission, because that's what they were told their entire life and because we still haven't figured it out. But looking at energy density or thermal transference and fusion just looks like a really crappy heat source, something that would be incredibly difficult to ever engineer into a product without a secondary invention that is just as difficult, if not more, than the initial idea of fusion.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#104

Post by epistasis »

ChefboyOG wrote: post #92
epistasis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all the self-driving cars hysteria was just momentum from the hype of deep learning advances. I remember thinking about the idea of self driving cars within 10 years, "this seems crazy, but I guess I've been wrong before...". A few years later it seems even crazier. But I've also been wronger than that... There were (are?) people talking about Artificial General Intelligence being just around the corner, whic…

I work in machine learning, and I've noticed a particular dynamic in how people treat predictions like this. In general, when there is a breakthrough in a field of research—like what deep learning went through recently—there is a gold rush of new projects that push the boundaries. A certain category of people look at these new startups, and project that momentum out to some extremely distant problem (like AGI or full…

Totally agree, and as newcomers enter the field they can have a mistaken sense of time as they digest a bunch of really amazing new ideas, like has happened with deep learning in the past decade (the decades before that felt much slower to me).

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#105

Post by Jommi »

smachiz wrote: post #91
opportune wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I got my parents to start using Uber. They are not very technologically literate and could definitely not be bothered to download a new app to save 10%.

But it isn't 10% - it's probably closer to 50%. The car is $30-50k with a lifetime of what, 10 years? The driver needs to earn $40k/yr. The vast majority of the cost is the driver - insurance and fuel are next, ultimately followed by vehicle capex and maintenance. Also don't underestimate the amount of local news coverage the driverless taxi will get - combined with the "there's no rude, smelly person driving me".

I think you're severely overestimating your case, not to mention the cost will probably be determined by a multitude of factors, one of the big ones being how advanced the self-driving tech is. Most of your points are just theoretical anecdotes.

You're not counting the RD cost that needs to be recouped. You're overestimating the trust people will have with "oh didn't that once kill a person"-autopilot will have.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#106

Post by lhorie »

baddox wrote: post #102
lhorie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several decades ago, I was hearing about flying cars. The technology existed for years. Commercial flight is a thing too, but 20 years later we're still no closer to having flying cars. Why would self driving cars be different?

I’m not sure I understand the argument. Surely you can’t conclude from the lack of flying cars that nothing will ever happen.

I'm questioning the notion that SDV are somehow just around the corner, considering that another technology with similar regulatory/safety/public opinion challenges still hasn't become ubiquitous after over 20 years.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#107

Post by smachiz »

Jommi wrote: post #105
smachiz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it isn't 10% - it's probably closer to 50%. The car is $30-50k with a lifetime of what, 10 years? The driver needs to earn $40k/yr. The vast majority of the cost is the driver - insurance and fuel are next, ultimately followed by vehicle capex and maintenance. Also don't underestimate the amount of local news coverage the driverless taxi will get - combined with the "there's no rude, smelly person driving me".

I think you're severely overestimating your case, not to mention the cost will probably be determined by a multitude of factors, one of the big ones being how advanced the self-driving tech is. Most of your points are just theoretical anecdotes. You're not counting the RD cost that needs to be recouped. You're overestimating the trust people will have with "oh didn't that once kill a person"-autopilot will have.

> not to mention the cost will probably be determined by a multitude of factors,

yes of course, but i included the big ones.

>You're not counting the RD cost that needs to be recouped.

Majority will be sunk costs by the time anyone is making money. But obviously, they will charge what the market will bear - but the margin improvement vs driven vehicles will be very significant.

The first robotaxi fleet be able to put any driver-based taxi company out of business simply by undercutting on price for as long as it takes. The only enemy is time to build that base - but the first company to successfully bring a robotaxi to market will necessarily have absurdly deep pockets because they invested the R&D necessary to build something that drives itself. If someone has a robotaxi that isn't Uber, Uber is going to be in very big trouble.

Also, I'm not really invested because I don't care - but it's really hard to overestimate the implications this has to the cost of (non-mass) transportation.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#108

Post by okareaman »

Uber has another problem I haven't seen mentioned. Many drivers have quit (for fear of getting sick I presume.) I know this because I drive for them (I like it) and the number of long drives to do a pickup for a short ride is way up, indicating there are no drivers nearby. I'm not going to drive 25 minutes to make $5, so I decline and the customer doesn't get a ride, I assume. If Uber wants drivers to come back they need to do more for driver safety. A really high quality mask would be a start.

Re: Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business

#110

Post by jlbnjmn »

meritt wrote: post #49
martythemaniak wrote: post #9

First, they were gonna make the jump to be an autonomous robotaxi service, but that's going nowhere fast. Then they were going to be mobility service - cars, bikes, scooters, everything would go through them. But no more. So what are they going to be now? Just milk their taxi service until Waymo, Tesla or whoever comes and wipes them off the market? Honestly, what are their long-term prospects? I've been staying away…

> I've been staying away from Uber stock because they have a market cap of 50B Not defending Uber here in the slightest, but given your post history on Tesla, I find it amusing you think Uber's market cap is egregious

Why is it amusing?

Not the commenter you responded to, but am bullish on Tesla and bearish on Uber.

I don't see the parallels between Uber, a taxi broker, and Tesla, a vertically integrated energy and automotive company.

What is your perspective? Why is Uber worth $50B and Tesla overvalued?

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