Surge pricing for investors?
Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
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Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#72good luck in China where carpooling was considered as illegal.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#73This figure might be wrong but the entire US taxi industry makes a revenue of $11 billion per year. Since US forms about 20% of the world's economy, we can assume the global taxi revenue to be $50 billion. Even if Uber takes in 20% from every ride, I can't imagine them possibly having more than $10 billion in revenue. Assuming Uber forms a 60% monopoly, they won't be making more than $6 billion in revenue. Kindly cor…
How big would the ridesharing market be if it became cheaper than car ownership?
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#74Umbrellas at the ready, the mess is going to be big when this bubble eventually bursts. Sure, I see the value of services like Uber, but there are so many ridesharing services in the market offering a decent product, Lyft arguably has a better app. While I don't doubt its usefulness, I don't think Uber is worth $40b. Especially considering it was only valued at roughly $17b in the summer which was what, like 6 months…
Disagree with almost everything you've written. It's a winner-take-most/all, trillion plus dollar market. Investors getting in at $40b, besides having little downside due to preferences, will almost certainly make a reasonable return. Uber is already on track for $1b in revenue and continues to grow very rapidly. Governments have in fact shown no ability to stop Uber (only a very few instances in the entire world). P…
> Governments have in fact shown no ability to stop Uber
Governments have not seriously tried to stop Uber yet. If/when they do, they will easily succeed.
Right now, the farthest most have gone is fining drivers a relatively small amount, which Uber pays. What happens when they step that up to seizing the car? Who is going to sign up to be an Uber driver in a city where it can get your car seized?
Here's how I predict it will go down. Cities will eventually decide to legalize Uber-type services, with such companies required to obtain a license. There will be a limited number of companies licensed in each city--it makes much more sense for the city and its citizens to have a small number of healthy companies than to have a large number of companies barely scraping by. Those licenses will go to Lyft and other non-Uber services, because they have not had the "fuck you" attitude that Uber has.
That's when the cities will crack down severely on Uber.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#75Umbrellas at the ready, the mess is going to be big when this bubble eventually bursts. Sure, I see the value of services like Uber, but there are so many ridesharing services in the market offering a decent product, Lyft arguably has a better app. While I don't doubt its usefulness, I don't think Uber is worth $40b. Especially considering it was only valued at roughly $17b in the summer which was what, like 6 months…
Disagree with almost everything you've written. It's a winner-take-most/all, trillion plus dollar market. Investors getting in at $40b, besides having little downside due to preferences, will almost certainly make a reasonable return. Uber is already on track for $1b in revenue and continues to grow very rapidly. Governments have in fact shown no ability to stop Uber (only a very few instances in the entire world). P…
Uber is already on track for $1b in revenue*
*gross revenue. Big difference.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think renting a medallion for a year in New York is going to cost you several tens of thousands of dollars a year. With medallions costing 800k, it doesn't really matter whether you're renting by the shift or paying interest on a loan used to purchase the medallion, it's going to be a significant expense.
It makes a huge difference whether you're renting the medallion or paying for a loan for it - only the person in the latter case will ultimately be able to sell the medallion back once they're done with it. The medallions are a perfect commodity and there's very little risk, and there are banks that specialize in loans for tax medallions, so the interest rates you can get for them is extremely low. Historically you'l…
Googling found me rates of about 4%-5% for a taxi medallion loan in NYC[1]. For an 800k medallion, that's 30k-40k a year in interest, which should still be giving a lot of wiggle room to a competitor not paying for medallions.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#77This figure might be wrong but the entire US taxi industry makes a revenue of $11 billion per year. Since US forms about 20% of the world's economy, we can assume the global taxi revenue to be $50 billion. Even if Uber takes in 20% from every ride, I can't imagine them possibly having more than $10 billion in revenue. Assuming Uber forms a 60% monopoly, they won't be making more than $6 billion in revenue. Kindly cor…
How big would the ridesharing market be if it became cheaper than car ownership?
We already have a ridesharing system which is much cheaper than car ownership and that system is called Public transport. I'm not entirely sure how Uber could turn into a system cheaper than London's tube or Delhi's metro. Plus, these systems are raising far bigger rounds than the $1.2 billion Uber just raised.
Was Uber designed to be the cheapest form of transport? I doubt it. You have pure convenience on one end (car ownership) and pure cost saving on the other (public transport) on the other. The taxi system lies in the middle, so does Uber. Taxis will have a space in the transportation market, just not the biggest space. I might be wrong here!!
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
How big would the ridesharing market be if it became cheaper than car ownership?
We already have a ridesharing system which is much cheaper than car ownership and that system is called Public transport. I'm not entirely sure how Uber could turn into a system cheaper than London's tube or Delhi's metro. Plus, these systems are raising far bigger rounds than the $1.2 billion Uber just raised. Was Uber designed to be the cheapest form of transport? I doubt it. You have pure convenience on one end (c…
Ridesharing has the potential to be cheaper than car ownership while still being as fast and convenient -- or even more fast and convenient.
The same can't be said for public transit, except for trips that happen to follow a major train line.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#79Numbers like these (also for Whatsapp) only show that the US$ is way overrated and a massive crash is probably due in a couple years.
Re: Uber Confirms New $1.2B Funding Round, Looks to Asia for Expansion
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes a huge difference whether you're renting the medallion or paying for a loan for it - only the person in the latter case will ultimately be able to sell the medallion back once they're done with it. The medallions are a perfect commodity and there's very little risk, and there are banks that specialize in loans for tax medallions, so the interest rates you can get for them is extremely low. Historically you'l…
Googling found me rates of about 4%-5% for a taxi medallion loan in NYC[1]. For an 800k medallion, that's 30k-40k a year in interest, which should still be giving a lot of wiggle room to a competitor not paying for medallions. [1] https://www.brfcu.org/rates_loans.asp
The most recent announced average rate at the largest medallion loan bank is 4.06%:
http://www.medallionfinancial.com/news_release_14-11-03.htm
The historical average appreciation rate of medallions is 14%:
http://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-nyc-taxi-med...
The differential between the loan rates and appreciation yields may be about as much as you make using it to actually drive the taxi:
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/10/21/why-taxi-me...