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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#251

Post by ratww »

inamberclad wrote: post #67

Uber as a business is a massive loss, but consumers still _chose_ Uber over taxis because the process of getting and riding in a car is a million times more transparent than a taxi ever was. You can see what car and what driver are picking you up, what route they're going to take, and how much it will cost. Taxis failed because they failed to modernize.

I don't know if this is true in all cases. In some countries, Taxi apps showed up before Uber, a few of them enabling negotiating the cost beforehand, and Uber still managed to capture a lot of the market.

Sure, those apps might have been a reaction to Uber in other countries, but the fact they were widespread (and sometimes with a great UX) didn't prevent Uber from arriving late but pretty much winning.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#252

Post by scoopertrooper »

scarface74 wrote: post #246
scoopertrooper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, another option would be for the government to help establish a drivers-cooperative app. An app where all the profits collected had to distributed back to the drivers or invested in the common infrastructure to maintain, promote, and improve the app. The drivers could also agree amongst themselves as to matters such as working conditions and minimum pay. Uber and others could still exist, but they'd be at a d…

“The government” is what caused the taxi system to be such a mess.

It also built the city streets those Taxis and Ubers cruise around on. What's your point?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#253

Post by _qua »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #213
inamberclad wrote: post #67

Uber as a business is a massive loss, but consumers still _chose_ Uber over taxis because the process of getting and riding in a car is a million times more transparent than a taxi ever was. You can see what car and what driver are picking you up, what route they're going to take, and how much it will cost. Taxis failed because they failed to modernize.

I have to tell the taxi driver to turn the damn meter on every time without fail. It's ridiculous. I don't know how someone more vulnerable could possibly use taxis since it's basically attempted robbery every time you enter one. Hopefully Uber/Lift win and Taxis die. For the sake of the disabled, women and children at least. I wouldn't even mind if Uber cost more.

What's the scam there? Do they not turn on the meter and then beg for payment at the end of the ride?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#254

Post by chaostheory »

nerdponx wrote: post #181
westcort wrote: post #35

My key takeaways: 1. Uber is actually a higher cost/less efficient producer of urban car services than the taxi companies it has driven out of business 2. Individual Uber drivers with limited capital cannot acquire, finance, maintain and insure vehicles more economically than Yellow Cab 3. Expenses other than drivers, vehicles, and fuel account for 15 percent of traditional taxi costs but Uber charges drivers 25-30 p…

With this many billion dollars on the line, one can never be too cynical. One has to wonder if this has been the endgame all along: driving taxi services out of business, replacing them with a monopoly where consumers pay the same price (or higher) and where drivers are paid less. I will say that services like Uber have been very beneficial for areas that were previously underserved by traditional taxi companies. But…

The end game was AI driverless cars. It would solve the economic problem assuming they could get to level 4 in time.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#255

Post by nine_k »

podviaznikov wrote: post #247
jmyeet wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with your points but let me give you some counterpoints: 1. Taxi services are balkanized; 2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service; 3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow…

5. I don’t think you address issue with cherry picking the price with part timers. Which is I know is the real one, because I realized I did it myself and it’s not very fair. Your answer is more like “what about taxi services, they also have edge cases” 2. But there are also taxi services that allow you too book ahead of time. Many cities in Europe had phone booking of the taxi for specific times at least 20 years ag…

The idea is that Uber (and Lyft) which has issues pushed out another system, which had a different set of issues, more unpleasant to the passenger in the case NYC (I live here and I agree).

Re: The Uber Bubble

#256

Post by farmerstan »

Only in hacker news do you find people who think the taxi industry is some bastion of freedom and some poor victim of Uber.

Does no one know how the taxi industry works and the insane levels of corruption involved? Most taxi drivers start their shift IN DEBT, every single shift. They owe the taxi company $100 at the beginning of their shift to rent the taxi and then have to work to pay off this debt every shift. Once they have earned it they can keep whatever money they earn. If they need to stop working in the middle of the shift, they are net negative.

They need to pay for their own gas, they need to clean the taxi, and if someone pukes in their car they have to clean it themselves.

There is no vacation pay, they have no freedom at all.

Most Uber drivers are happy. That’s a fact. I dare you to ask your next driver. I just took 2 Ubers today and they were happy. My second driver told me he felt lucky because he had Uber to fall back on during the pandemic. You get a small number of professional drivers who want to destroy uber and journalists that want to as well so you get completely slanted articles like this. Somehow Lyft is the hero and Uber is the bad guy, when both do exactly the same things.

The simple fact is Uber provides a great service and most drivers are happy. In terms of investment, post-IPO it has been largely dead money but the idea is never going away.

Taxi companies are not the heros here. They were even more predatory than anything claimed here about Uber which are mostly twists or flat out lies.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#257

Post by hatchnyc »

westcort wrote: post #35

My key takeaways: 1. Uber is actually a higher cost/less efficient producer of urban car services than the taxi companies it has driven out of business 2. Individual Uber drivers with limited capital cannot acquire, finance, maintain and insure vehicles more economically than Yellow Cab 3. Expenses other than drivers, vehicles, and fuel account for 15 percent of traditional taxi costs but Uber charges drivers 25-30 p…

> Uber charges drivers 25-30 percent without coming close to covering their actual costs

I mean this is it, right? This is the big one. All these "tech" companies that are not actually selling software taking huge cuts off the top line, this can't be sustainable.

You can own the market for a while, but sooner or later someone is going to come along and disrupt you.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#258

Post by farmerstan »

cameronh90 wrote: post #118

Do people actually claim Uber is a successful business? In the UK, none of the original companies that built the railroads still exist. Many of the railway companies were never particularly profitable and the railway boom was a stock market bubble. Lots of them were fraudulent or poorly run. Eventually they all either went out of business, or amalgamated and ultimately got nationalised. Nevertheless, they proved the…

Surviving a “few decades” sounds like a successful business in anyones eyes.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#259

Post by mikeryan »

jmyeet wrote: post #211
westcort wrote: post #35

My key takeaways: 1. Uber is actually a higher cost/less efficient producer of urban car services than the taxi companies it has driven out of business 2. Individual Uber drivers with limited capital cannot acquire, finance, maintain and insure vehicles more economically than Yellow Cab 3. Expenses other than drivers, vehicles, and fuel account for 15 percent of traditional taxi costs but Uber charges drivers 25-30 p…

I don't disagree with your points but let me give you some counterpoints: 1. Taxi services are balkanized; 2. Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service; 3. Uber made the payment process seamless and I cannot overstate how important this is as a user. I hate dealing with NYC yellow…

Many tax services don't allow you to order a taxi ahead of time. You have to flag one down (eg NYC). For ordering a car, you need to otherwise deal with an (expensive) car service

First this is just inherently wrong. You’ve been able to call and schedule a cab, even in the burbs, since before the internet was a thing.

Second there’s now services like Curb (in NYC) or Flywheel which allow you to use an Uber/Lyft style experience with cabs.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#260

Post by femto113 »

rsanek wrote: post #220
gruez wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Under financialised logic it is absolutely immaterial whether Twitter, Uber or whatever make a penny. Ever. Or whether any of the stakeholders are served. The rules of traditional business go out the window. What makes you think that shareholders in Twitter or Uber don't care that they'll never make a penny? They're not turning a profit now, but it seems at least somewhat plausible that they'll make money in the fut…

> They're not turning a profit now Uber turned a profit in 2021Q2. [0] Twitter now has had many profitable quarters. [1] Of course, cumulatively, they are both money-losing, but I think the perception of these businesses as only having a 'plausibility' of making money is perhaps dated. [0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/UBER/uber-technolo... [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/net-i.…

"Turning a profit" has almost no meaning, particularly with mark-to-market investments in the mix. More concretely Uber's business has never generated positive cash flow (i.e. taken in more money in a given period than they spent in that same period) and are projecting they will reach that milestone for the first time in Q4 of this year.
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