Uber loses $2.9B, offloads bike and scooter business • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by lhorie » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:30 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #98

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?

The factors seems weighted very differently. Flying cars are even more dangerous than SDV (a flying ton near buildings ?). The technological soil of the era might be less nurturing than today.

> Flying cars are even more dangerous than SDV

Are they though? Statistically speaking, planes are safer than cars, and SDVs don't exactly have a pristine record track already.

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

#112

Post by meritt » Sat, May 09, 2020, 4:54 AM UTC

jlbnjmn wrote: post #110

meritt wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Why is it amusing?

Because Uber's market cap is indeed egregious, but not nearly as inflated as Tesla. So it's amusing when people like yourself rationally find issue with Uber, but cannot find any flaw in the valuation of Tesla.

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

#113

Post by tachyonbeam » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:22 AM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #68

legolas2412 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However I find it much more plausible that Waymo and Tesla will vendor out the details of the rideshare service rather than build their own from scratch. Yeah, but that puts all value add in waymo or Tesla's hands, not Uber's. Uber will have no advantage, and cannot charge juicy margins.

I wouldn't be too worried about Tesla if I was Uber. Even if they get the hardware first without competition it would be a massive undertaking to build out a competitive transport business. The capital costs to create a fleet to have similar hailing times to Uber would be absolutely massive - now you have to buy the car instead of just recruiting a driver - plus they'd have to catch up on the logistics to try to pay…

Tesla's plan is to have an option, after you purchase or lease the car, to make it available as part of the Tesla network. This is something you could likely enable from the Tesla app on your smartphone. That way, they don't need to pay for any vehicles to build a fleet. They have a huge advantage, being a vertically integrated automaker.

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

#114

Post by tachyonbeam » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:30 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #111

agumonkey wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The factors seems weighted very differently. Flying cars are even more dangerous than SDV (a flying ton near buildings ?). The technological soil of the era might be less nurturing than today.

> Flying cars are even more dangerous than SDV Are they though? Statistically speaking, planes are safer than cars, and SDVs don't exactly have a pristine record track already.

Commercial planes are inspected regularly by qualified technicians, flown by professional pilots, and they don't fly between buildings in densely populated areas. Imagine if every average joe owned a helicopter, and maintained it the way he maintains his rusty old car... Small planes don't have nearly the safety record of commercial planes, and if everyone owned aerial vehicles that fly inside cities, you can be sure it would be a disaster.

I think there's an argument to be made that if flying cars were owned by a company like Uber, regularly inspected, and flown by a computer, the safety could be there, but then you're still left with issues such as noise and energy efficiency.

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

#115

Post by yabatopia » Sat, May 09, 2020, 5:38 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #74

rob_austin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is consumers have also lost because of uber. The promise of convenient, affordable transportation will not be delivered. Uber/Lyft rides will be more expensive than cab rides were because users have to support Uber's overhead.

self driving cars are the answer, which are impervious to pandemics like coronavirus as an added bonus and will reduce the human death toll inflicted from motor-vehicle casualties at the hands of human drivers.

I'm not convinced that self driving cars are pandemic proof, on the contrary. Who's gonna desinfect the car seates and handles of an autonomous self driving car during a deadly pandemic? It's a lot safer to use your own car than a virus and bacteria ridden shared car used by God knows how many infected people. The customer isn't gonna clean it. So you need workers to clean and desinfect the car after every single ride. Even if you use robots, the cars must drive to the cleaning facility first, dramatically reducing their availability on the streets and profitability.

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

#116

Post by baddox » Sat, May 09, 2020, 6:11 AM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #106

baddox wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flying cars aren’t (as far as I know) being routinely tested in major cities the same way self-driving cars are.

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

#117

Post by someonehere » Sat, May 09, 2020, 6:22 AM UTC

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…

Somewhere on reddit I saw an info graphic showing what parts of the US were dominated by food delivery businesses. Uber Eats was apparently the top delivery service in the Georgia region. I don’t recall them being anywhere else.

I have this weird feeling with people ordering out food, Uber could easily shift to being a delivery service.

1) You keep your fit economy workers employed. 2) They have an app to tell them where to go from point a to point b for deliveries. 3) People are shipping more things across town and social distancing.

Honestly for what I do for my job, I’d rather pay an Uber to pick up the equipment I need to ship out biweekly and take it to UPS to get boxed and shipped. Sort of a TaskRabbit for deliveries.

The whole bad image Uber gets for drivers sexually assaulting passengers or even attacking passengers goes away.

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

#118

Post by sceptical » Sat, May 09, 2020, 6:23 AM UTC

clairity wrote: post #36

deminature wrote: post #5

"Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. of $2.9 billion, which includes $277 million in stock-based compensation expense and pre-tax impairment write-downs of $2.1 billion. Net loss attributable to Uber Technologies, Inc. excluding the impairment write-downs, net of the tax benefit would have been $1.1 billion." So a loss of $1.1bn is an improvement on $1.4 last quarter, not including write-downs associated…

you shouldn't ignore impairment. it's a place to stuff a bunch of bad decisions, and an amorphous bucket where value can be plausibly inflated and deflated to control the performance story of a company (i.e., where fraud can happen).

In this particular case it is mainly the value of the investments in DiDi, Yandex.Taxi and Grab. Once those will bounce back, Uber will have a very profitable quarter. Of course then it will be ignored as just increased value of investments.

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

#119

Post by ceras » Sat, May 09, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

filmgirlcw wrote: post #50

warent wrote: post #44

Can anyone explain why Lyft is not experiencing the same pain? I've always used them over Uber (not an investor in either, just a customer) and now as much as ever Lyft just seems to be a smarter, more mature company.

But they are? Lyft laid off 17% of its staff the other day, despite promising no layoffs weeks ago [1]. Lyft doesn’t have Uber’s exposure in other business sectors like food delivery or scooters (a sector it actually exited in November), and it doesn’t have Uber’s global business (for better or for worse — it could be better now but be worse if other parts of the world recover before the US), but I would hardly call…

Quick correction: Lyft continues to operate scooters (as well as bikeshare), e.g. see this recent program: https://www.lyft.com/blog/posts/LyftUp-Scooter-Critical-Work...

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

#120

Post by sceptical » Sat, May 09, 2020, 6:46 AM UTC

ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #90

windexh8er wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure you're considering how fickle riders are. I work in a (what used to be) high travel group of tech. Most all of my peers and I are heavy rideshare users. Honestly, we don't care who the app owner is, but want the rides to be consistent and reliable. None of my peers is tied to Lyft or Uber, even with promotions and "status" gimmicks. If a ride can show up 3 minutes faster on Lyft - I'm taking that over Ub…

I used to work for Thoughtworks and I just used Lyft all the time. I’m not going to look at both apps wasting time basically comparing prices. Definitely not just to save three minutes. I think this kind of thinking, is a very small minority, they probably all read HN too, am I right? I don’t use Uber cus of ideological reasons. A lot of people, even in this community, are the same.

> I don’t use Uber cus of ideological reasons. A lot of people, even in this community, are the same.

Uber/Lyft marketshare in all US markets tell another story. This community is a small echo chamber and thus rather uninformed.