81–90 of 196 posts
This is how capitalism works, survival of the fittest. If someone comes along that allows the drivers to make more money, prudent drivers will likely switch to that service. It is a no brainer.
And the irony is this is exactly what Uber is doing to the traditional taxi industry.
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Someone will still need to manage the fleet of self driving cars. Who is going to fill them with gas, do routine maintenance, clean them after some drunk dude puked all over the back seat, etc?
If they're electric vehicles, they'll charge on their own based on closest charging station and the cost of electricity at the time they need their charge. Also, the only maintenance you'd require would be tire rotations/changes every ~5K miles, and a new battery every 150K-200K miles (Tesla automated the battery pack swap, I'm sure they could automate pulling four wheels off and bolting four new ones back on). I agr…
You could outsource the car cleaning with an agreement at any full service car wash.
One doesn't even need a physical presence anywhere to make the business work.
I can think of two possible sources of driver lock-in: insurance (on the clock but between rides) and car financing. Anyone heard of uber or lyft working on this?
If you lock in a driver, you start to look like an employer with employees. This creates enormous payroll tax responsibility, workers comp insurance and other headaches for Uber/Lyft.
I would bet that Uber/Lyft have burned a metric crapton of lawyer and accountant brains in an effort to be on the "safe" side of the independent contractor vs employee fight. They're not going to screw that up.
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How would you say self-driving vehicles fit into this? Supposedly they're rolling out in ~3-5 years, and with self-driving vehicles, you no longer need the middle man managing a fleet of contractors. EDIT: I'm willing to me a Long Bet [1] with anyone regarding fully autonomous self driving vehicles in regular use in 6 years. [1] http://longbets.org/ ; http://longbets.org/rules/
It's clearly Uber's plan to replace all their drivers with self-driving cars in the future - I think they've even said so themselves. But even six years is a long time for a VC-funded business. And what does "regular use" mean? That seems like the critical component of a bet like this.
If anyone can buy a self-driving vehicle, Uber and Lyft are aberrations, as anyone (even FedEx and UPS) could provide self-driving vehicle livery services. Its no longer a marketplace business; its a fleet management business (and both UPS and FedEx are extremely capable at managing capital expenditures, fleet operations, and system capacity).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they're electric vehicles, they'll charge on their own based on closest charging station and the cost of electricity at the time they need their charge. Also, the only maintenance you'd require would be tire rotations/changes every ~5K miles, and a new battery every 150K-200K miles (Tesla automated the battery pack swap, I'm sure they could automate pulling four wheels off and bolting four new ones back on). I agr…
Heck, they won't even need to plug in once we get wireless, inductive charging stations or inductive roads. Both are coming. You could outsource the car cleaning with an agreement at any full service car wash. One doesn't even need a physical presence anywhere to make the business work.
While high-capacity electric vehicles like a Tesla wouldn't be able to wirelessly charge, it should be trivial to build a physical dock they can connect to with no human intervention (similar to how SpaceX designed the DragonEye mating connector for autonomous mating to the ISS).
The really interesting story here is that if drivers are so willing to switch networks for better opportunities, there isn't a compelling reason for Uber to have the valuation that they do. The value of Uber isn't really in the tech or the app - it's in the networks of riders and drivers in each city. If each of those can be aggregated into some other kind of service, where Uber, Lyft, etc. are just providers of paym…
Uber is going to be a logistics company. But I agree they are grossly overvalued.
Disregarding the fact that the "driver in a car" model is never going to be the most efficient means of transporting things (as opposed to people), we're ignoring the fact that the "Uber for X" formula already has many players.
Instacart, Seamless, GrubHub, Google Shopping Express, Postmates, every product category already has an "Uber". In fact every product category already has several "Ubers".
Uber won't have a first-mover advantage in any of them, and a lot of them thrive on having logistics options that aren't "dude in a sedan/SUV", and have built substantial hard-to-clone infrastructure on that front.
Uber has a lot of momentum, and a lot of hard-to-clone systems built around freelancer drivers, but IMO others are ahead in applying logistics to other things. This is like saying "Toyota can leverage their engineering expertise and totally own aerospace!" ... without acknowledging the existence of Boeing and Airbus.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's clearly Uber's plan to replace all their drivers with self-driving cars in the future - I think they've even said so themselves. But even six years is a long time for a VC-funded business. And what does "regular use" mean? That seems like the critical component of a bet like this.
"Regular use" is defined as you being able to hail one to take you at least 30 miles for ~$50, from either a mobile or webapp. If anyone can buy a self-driving vehicle, Uber and Lyft are aberrations, as anyone (even FedEx and UPS) could provide self-driving vehicle livery services. Its no longer a marketplace business; its a fleet management business (and both UPS and FedEx are extremely capable at managing capital e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if drivers are so willing to switch networks for better opportunities, there isn't a compelling reason for Uber to have the valuation that they do. There are two sides to the story: If customers are so enamored with Uber that they wouldn't consider Lyft or the other services, Uber will still be in control. EDIT TO CLARIFY: Did not mean to suggest that customers are indeed enamored with Uber. Only wanted to point ou…
There is absolutely a large chunk of the rides-for-hire passenger population that is entirely mercenary in its affections. Some people are loyal Uber passengers or loyal Lyft passengers or whatever, but a lot of people are happy to go where the bargains are.