So, can we say that this is the moment when taxi industry and car production industry are officially starting to turn into a single unified transportation industry?
G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
141–150 of 402 posts
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#142“From a G.M. perspective, we view this as much more of an opportunity than a threat” - G.M President Something you don't hear big corps talk so about start-ups very often. It's promising.
I can't see the opportunity for them, on the other hand I can see the threat, if autonomous cars become ubiquitous then why would you bother owning your own? Also if rental becomes the dominant model then customers aren't going to worry so much about those expensive extras where car manufacturers make their profits.
It's similar to Amazon viewing the Kindle as an opportunity.
If you aren't in a position to prevent innovation from happening then you may as well be the leader of said innovation.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#143Ugh, self driving cars, but SHITTY self-driving cars. Of course.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The bailout was massively profitable for the government and every penny has been repaid I don't really have a stance on the GM bailout, but your statement here is missing something important - every company that a government gives billions to will do disproportionately well in their industry in the short term and give solid returns. But the role of taxpayer money isn't to select winners. The free market is supposed…
The government didn't give money, they invested because the market wasn't in a position to do so when the industry needed it. The narrative that the company is only going to do good short-term because the government gave them a lot of money doesn't make sense when the government has since sold it's position in that company for a profit , meaning the market now viewed that company as a more favorable investment then t…
> they invested because the market wasn't in a position to do so when the industry needed it
How is this different than "The industry planned poorly and deserves to have its assets liquidated?"
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
When that happens you can almost bet that it will be a hypercompetitive market which is likely to eventually be dominated by car manufacturers. I mean why do you need Uber at all when you make the car itself and all of its inside. It's not as if the software to coordinate pickup and drop-offs is rocket science. And neither is customer service. I look forward to how cheap and easy it will be and how the manufacturers…
This is interesting. It's what Christensen's theory of disruption would say, given the time, (lack of) complexity, and the curve of 'good enough.' The only thing could be branding. There is a reason many people buy iPhones, or bottled water in a fancy plastic container for $5/bottle. Would we want Uber because it's "better" than GM, which does not have a huge appeal? Then again, a car is a car is a car, if it is on t…
> many people buy iPhones, or bottled water in a fancy...
> a car is a car is a car, if it is on time, clean and cheap.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss branding as being inconsequential.
water may be water, but there's a fairly high expectation to achieve when it comes to user experience that's associated with branding. The minimum the general public will expect is "on time, clean, cheap".
While the HN population may have a significant size of community that looks to optimize for cost, the a large portion (maybe huge subsection?) of the population make choices based on the "premium" experience.
"What you thought I'd call an UberX for you?" "Starbucks is way better than Dunkin Donuts" "iPhones are so much better than Androids" "Voss water is more refreshing." "My Lexus is so much smoother than the Toyota" "Target, where you pay a little more to avoid the people at Walmart."
As asinine as it sounds to us, there's a significant population of vanity that wants to be monetized for the benefits of social signaling and/or the additional desirability of a given brand.
I'd anticipate that the consumer market will be similar to the vehicles available today with the potential following major divisions in autonomous driving.
Value - 5-20+ minute wait times. it may be a little dirty, a little smelly, and sometimes will be nice and clean (nice surprise) but will focus on absolute lowest cost. (Kia, Hyundai, Suzuki level car) $200/mo for 1000mi
Premium experience - 1-15+ min wait times. generally clean & comfortable. (Toyota, Honda, Ford, GM family sedan level car) $200-500/mo for 1000mi
Luxury - 1-5+ min wait times in major suburban counties. high guarantees on wait & cleanliness. Optional personal concierge in car that helps with loading, groceries, etc (BMW, Lexus, Mercedes level car) $300-1000/mo for 1000mi
Executive - dedicated service in the equivalent of a 100k+ car (BMW 7 Series, Mercedes S Class level car) $2500+/mo for 500mi, $5000/mo for unlimited mileage.
With all that said, catering to these different markets may require quite a bit of pivoting for existing car manufacturers and of administrative burden they may not necessarily want or care to deal with. I also see car manufacturers doing something similar to drop ship online stores of today to prevent car buying power aggregating to only a handful of powerful buyers responsible for 95% of the business.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
GM has good reason to make risky decisions, since the taxpayers will likely be asked to support the company a second time if it runs into trouble. As a taxpayer, I would like them to be as safe and stagnant as possible, but I have no say in the matter. This is the moral hazard created by the bailout.
Ford was in bad shape in 2006. Does anyone even remember the Ford of 2006? With their awful Focus when everyone was clamoring for the euro version? Or the Ford 500? They didn't avoid a "bailout" because they were a strong company. Two years earlier they mortgaged everything (including the iconic blue-oval logo) while money was still cheap. It was pure luck. Not strength or some sort of moral superiority. So by the ti…
This all points towards i being a market problem that the government tried to mitigate (which fits their narrative), not a problem specifically with GM being so bad it needed a bailout. If the market wasn't in the disarray from the beginnings of a recession (and IMO what might have well been a depression without intervention), then it's entirely possible that GM would have found enough investment from other sources to pull itself out of the problem (as you point out, Ford was able to do it a few years prior, and GM was able to do it with the government investment).
Investors that think the government will bail out GM again just because they have in the past are betting money in a way that they're likely to lose. The important factor of the GM bailout wasn't GM, it was how the industry as a whole was doing, and how the financial markets were acting at the time. GM would have been the first of a set of dominoes that included most if not all the auto-makers due to their shared dependencies on the parts companies that would have went out of business (which Ford testified to at the time). The important thing here is the dominoes, not GM. They just happened to be the first one in line.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
>autonomous cars become ubiquitous then why would you bother owning your own? Anything requiring a truck (60% of new vehicle sales) will not be something that you use as a automated vehicle that is for rent. You really are ok with ordering up a driverless car that I will take off-road and load up with scrap materials from a house remodel and send off, driverless down the road with my trash hanging out the back? I rea…
Why would the autonomous vehicle I rent for a commute ever be the same one you use to load up with refuse from your home remodel? Wouldn't it make way more sense for you to rent (or own) a pickup truck and for me to rent an autonomous passenger vehicle? Setting autonomous vehicles aside, current short-term car rental companies (i.e Zipcar) have requirements on the condition you return a passenger vehicle in, vs a car…
Imagine if you owned 10 rental properties, were a plumber, an electrician, a basketball coach or had almost any job other than something in the tech industry. You would use your truck/van/large SUV for hauling trash, wire, sports equipment, etc.
You would laugh at the idea of selling your primary transport and using an uber/lyft every day to transport all your equipment. Every time one shows up or drops off, remove and replace all your tools/gear. The wear and tear on these vehicles is greater than a small commuter.
Just because you rented a truck once to move gardening supplies makes you anomalous. Most people who want to do that kind of work/hobby own a vehicle that allows them to transport these things with ease.
We haven't even gotten into the aspect of children. Imagine remove/replace every day on a child car seat from a rental.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
If nothing else, I'm rooting for Lyft so that Uber is not the only one out there. I'm scared of what would happen to service / prices if Uber had no real competition. For that reason, I only use Lyft.
Local monopolies are usually the rule rather than the exception, with global monopolies rarely (if ever) occurring. This makes me wonder if Lyft can leverage the backlash against Uber and achieve success in areas hostile to Uber but not hostile to ridesharing/Car-as-a-Service services. It is essentially a land-grab but on a global scale, with the measure of success being on-going local dominance on a per city basis.…
Local monopolies are the norm in industries where massive capital investment is required (electricity, cable). Uber is not this type of business. Uber is more like a marketplace (like Amazon or Ebay)... while network effects are strong there is no reason to think that local monopolies are inevitable.
Also, if you catch an Uber in SF or Seattle, the driver is likely to be running Lyft and Uber. Sure, Uber can try to give drivers disincentives to use multiple apps. But good luck doing that AND staying out of anti-trust investigations AND convincing everybody that their drivers are still contractors not employees.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#149GM had and still has an impressive technical research center. Its just that establishment big companies dont get the respect that startup companies do. Nor can the employees win big like in a startup IPO. General Electric is currently running a humorous TV commercial about this. A hipster engineers friends throw him a "new job party". But they go slackjaw when they discover he joinged GE instead of Facebook. GE has t…
Edison being the guy who ripped off Tesla?
Yes, Edison who also invented the lightbulb, phonograph, motion pictures, carbon microphone, fuel cell, stock ticker, and alkaline battery.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#150It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…
>(Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.)
Car ownership is 45% in NYC. Not sure why this is considered "scarce" :)