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The Uber Bubble

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Re: The Uber Bubble

#491

Post by oblio »

kingcharles wrote: post #280
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…

Good points, but I would add that what Uber is doing now is just carving out a chunk of the market for what is coming in the next few years. Most of your points revolve around human drivers and the gasoline-powered vehicles they own. The future of Uber is probably a majority of driverless vehicles that are corporately-owned. That is a vastly different model.

> The future of Uber is probably a majority of driverless vehicles that are corporately-owned. That is a vastly different model.

And the future of BP and Shell is cold fusion reactors. Any day now!

Re: The Uber Bubble

#492

Post by gog »

malka wrote: post #436
blackhaz wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very common in Prague. Uber in Prague is a disaster. About 5% of my rides are probably ending up with having to pay a cancellation fee for a driver who never showed up. Contacting support to resolve this is pain indeed. Most of the Uber rides in Prague are owned by limited liability companies (s r.o.). I guess there's some kind of an alliance between Uber and those local companies. Another 5-10% or so of my Ub…

Same in Croatia. In Croatia this is due to Ubers being also regular cabs.

I am not sure that is the case, but I know most of them use both Uber and Bolt (a competing app).

Re: The Uber Bubble

#493

Post by lhorie »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #137
lhorie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber. The thing is that for a lot of drivers, Uber is complementary income on top of a primary, inflexible income source. AFAIK, there's nothing else other than gig economy that lets someone supplement income piecemeal. If you think in terms of socio-economic mobility, isn't the ability to squeeze extra earning opportunities in between other…

> But it's not like people are necessarily worse off by choosing to drive for Uber. I'm reminded of the video of the Uber driver confronting Kalanick during a ride because the driver had been encouraged to buy a high end car by Uber in order to participate in Uber Black[0]. After he bought the car, Uber started lowering the rates on Uber Black, which resulted in less income for the drivers. That guy sounded like he w…

I mean, the whole premise of gig economy is you need to do your homework because you're an independent contractor. A lot of drivers on YouTube will tell you that you have work smart, do your own math, etc.

Obviously the Kalanick incident made news because of how viral the scenario was, but the reality is that there's a lot of variability and for every person complaining that more drivers on the road equate less per-driver demand, there's another five drivers quietly making extra cash after their day jobs.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#494

Post by jasonladuke0311 »

matwood wrote: post #400
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…

> Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times. And if you did get one, you had to have cash. In my 20s I had the personal phone numbers of a couple who ran a car service. I would only ride with them after another taxi home (probably unlicensed) where the driver was drinking smh. I wonder how many DUIs have been avoided since Ube…

> And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times.

Not just small cities. I lived in Las Vegas for many years. Try getting a taxi to take you from the airport to the suburbs at 2am. I got hung up on by two taxi services. When I finally got someone to pick me up, I had to wait 30 mins for them to drop off other fares to the Strip before they would take me.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#495

Post by njoubert »

I find it hard to believe any article that describes taxi services as "efficient but undercapitalizes". Does the author remember the experience of trying to find a cab if you weren't in a downtown area already?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#496

Post by sebastos »

nprateem wrote: post #452
kgbcia wrote: post #451

Forget the economics for a minute . Uber Lyft changed the way we pay for rides and rate drivers. Uber used online payment and GPS to create a simple app that works. I no longer have to worry about payment since I prepay. Cars are owned by the individual so they are cleaner inside. I can summon one from a distance and I can pinpoint the exact pickup Spot. I once called a taxi dispatcher and I felt berated. It's the us…

All of which have been replicated by my local taxi app

Which works perfectly when you fly to a new city and need a ride out of the airport, right?

Re: The Uber Bubble

#497

Post by lappa »

matwood wrote: post #400
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…

> Taxis died because it's a horrible user experience And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times. And if you did get one, you had to have cash. In my 20s I had the personal phone numbers of a couple who ran a car service. I would only ride with them after another taxi home (probably unlicensed) where the driver was drinking smh. I wonder how many DUIs have been avoided since Ube…

>And in small cities/towns, getting a taxi was nearly impossible a lot of the times.

My experience has been the opposite. In small towns you cannot get use rideshare apps, but you can dial a taxi service. This has been the case in every town of less than 1,000 I've needed a ride in.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#498

Post by cgearhart »

njoubert wrote: post #495

I find it hard to believe any article that describes taxi services as "efficient but undercapitalizes". Does the author remember the experience of trying to find a cab if you weren't in a downtown area already?

Pretty sure he means cost efficient—as in the cab companies had optimized the cost structure of their business by negotiating large orders for fleet vehicles, insurance, etc., which should be more efficient than asking the same number of Uber drivers to do it independently.

Re: The Uber Bubble

#499

Post by nprateem »

sebastos wrote: post #496
nprateem wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of which have been replicated by my local taxi app

Which works perfectly when you fly to a new city and need a ride out of the airport, right?

I know right, it's as difficult as going on the app store and typing " taxi app"

Re: The Uber Bubble

#500

Post by sebastos »

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 have absolutely no vested interest in defending Uber, but every time one of these threads pops up I feel compelled to throw cold water on it because this website is so damn obsessed with predicting Uber's doom. I have comments that are 6 years old saying "no, uber is not dying", with a thread full of angry pitchforks sure I am wrong.

Nobody cares if Uber as a whole is more "efficient" as measured by some global measure of dollars invested into the service. They care whether -their- individual lived experience is preferable. The obvious takeaway is that urban residents are happy to pay more money overall on car services, so long as those services provide a higher quality experience. People do not like feeling like the end of a cab ride might result in a game of "pretend the card reader doesn't work", people don't like to feel like their destination is an imposition on the driver who will now sit up front fuming about where you've taken him. People don't like having their sense of decency pitted against each other to win a cab in a reasonable amount of time without rudely upstreaming someone. People don't like waiting outside in the cold. People don't like being surprised by how high the meter is when they get out. People don't like having no recourse when they accidentally leave their phone behind besides calling a rude dispatcher. People like cars with nicely maintained interiors that don't smell weird.

How hard is this to understand? The average ride experience you get in an Uber is better. Uber pioneered that improved customer experience by figuring out a solution (some social, some technical) to the biggest friction points. Uber and Lyft are the 700lb gorillas in the rideshare company space, which absolutely DOES have network effects, despite the facile claim otherwise in the article. This is the basis for thinking these companies have a promising future. It's that simple. The size of the circlejerk predicting that it's all going to fall over tomorrow is so embarrassingly, transparently motivated by _hoping_ that it's going to fall over tomorrow.

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