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

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

#131

Post by agumonkey » Sat, May 09, 2020, 7:43 PM UTC

lhorie wrote: post #129

agumonkey wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never could swallow the statistics of flight safety. Of course they're safer, there's nothing in the sky. I assure you I can drive a million mile in a flat desert without a single incident while sleeping[0]. Flying cars were probably asking to operate in close proximity to things and people and it would make the probs a lot different IMO. [0] end of hyperbole.

One of the promises about flying cars was speed: you would theoretically be able to live in LA and commute to SF. So there was definitely some amount of disruption talk. With that said, this is sort of the point: SDVs would be close to arms reach of pedestrians virtually all the time, so I'd imagine that when all is said and done, the safety/regulatory barrier ought to be an extremely high hurdle to overcome. There a…

Yeah they're even closer but they're not flying. I'm not even arguing for SDV or against flying cars but I do believe that flying tons in cities is (unless you have Transformers level of tech) non sequitur.

That said I'm far more about co-disrupting the world by .. walking.

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

#132

Post by randomsearch » Sat, May 09, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

Jommi wrote: post #58

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.

The consumers are in Ubers pocket. Wayne and Tesla will be smooching to be Uner's chosen one. Businesses are demand based, not supply based.

Businesses are a function of supply and demand

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

#133

Post by Jommi » Sun, May 10, 2020, 12:06 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #132

Jommi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumers are in Ubers pocket. Wayne and Tesla will be smooching to be Uner's chosen one. Businesses are demand based, not supply based.

Businesses are a function of supply and demand

But most evidence is pointing to the chicken-egg game starting from the demand side :)

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

#134

Post by FabHK » Sun, May 10, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

gffrd wrote: post #11

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…

This is what I want to know. Ridesharing fares are obviously underpriced … and if they were raised 30% to make them sustainable, it becomes "not worth it" for a good chunk of people who use ridesharing as a supplement to car, bus, transit, etc. I assume the strategy is a long-play to have people + communities become wholly dependent on your services (they skip buying cars, skip learning to drive, transit fails to evo…

> I assume the strategy is a long-play to have people + communities become wholly dependent on your services (they skip buying cars, skip learning to drive, transit fails to evolve further), then once they are, ratchet up the prices?

You forgot: drive sustainable incumbents out of business by undercutting them, even though you have higher actual cost, with VC subsidies.

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

#135

Post by FabHK » Sun, May 10, 2020, 1:04 PM UTC

lucasmullens wrote: post #26

gberger wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2.9 billion is 3 unicorns. Hmm, unicorns are usually defined by $1B valuation, while the number of $2.9B in loss is related to revenue. So I think the comparison doesn't hold, it's apples to oranges.

Seems like a fair comparison, they could have acquired 3 unicorn companies with that money.

Per year.

(Comparisons involving both stock and flow measures are somewhat dodgy, but they’re made all the time (debt/GDP, annual rent/house price, unicorns/revenue)).

Edit to add: they’re not really dodgy per se, but the result is a rate, ie has a time dimension.

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

#136

Post by jdsully » Mon, May 11, 2020, 1:18 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.

General aviation (the closes comparison to driving) is more than 20x more dangerous than driving.

https://philip.greenspun.com/flying/safety