Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#141

Post by dsfyu404ed » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

izzydata wrote: post #33

bluetidepro wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to SF, but here in Chicago, they have been gradually getting higher each year. I have consistently taken an Uber to work every morning for about 5 years now, and I used to pay $5-7 for the ride, but now it is $9-12. I will say though, the huge benefit now is their rewards have a "price protection" [1] for some tiers that allow for a cap on that ride price, so I think it can no longer go above $10.99 or…

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

Outside certain places with very high car ownership uber is tons more expensive.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#142

Post by darkwizard42 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

tekno45 wrote: post #103

paxys wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and those in place for the safety of the general public. What regulations are these? Is there any case where taking taxis was or is safer for an average customer than Uber?

Taxi drivers had background checks,

Uber and Lyft have background checks across the board. They also had a higher insurance policy ($1M standard) than most cab companies ever did...

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#143

Post by chiefgeek » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

arrozconcosas wrote: post #57

izzydata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

How much is the total cost of owning a car in Chicago? Including gas, parking, insurance, maintenance and consumables, depreciation/lease, etc?

A lot. I live just outside the city limit. 2015 VW Golf Wagon. Payment is only $260/month because I bought it used, got a decent amount for my trade in, and put extra down. Insurance $100/month. Gas, tolls, taxes, misc parking $200/month. Parking at my apartment is included in lease but can easily be $200-400 depending on where in the city you are. I'm a freelancer. As such I don't pay for monthly parking in the city, which could be another $200-400.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#144

Post by ng12 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

Uber and the gig economy are just a small part of a much larger trend. American labor has been increasingly devalued since the late 70s. The only difference is, opposed to say offshoring manufacturing jobs, that it's very visible to yuppies in SF and NYC rather than being isolated to rust belt towns and the midwest.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#145

Post by xvedejas » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

shartshooter wrote: post #106

xvedejas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, since nobody else has replied with public transit: SF has a really great bus system that, if you're traveling along any of the frequent lines with bus lanes, is usually the same speed as an uber once you factor in the wait. It's just $2.50 for 3 hours of free transfers, and 24/7 service.

Not on New Year’s Eve or any other major drinking holiday. Try hailing a cab or finding a spot on the bus when you’re in the mission trying to make it to the marina or pac heights at 1:30am. I’ve seen buses filled with people just skip stops because they’re too full. Ridesharing has helped immensely with that excess demand even with surge pricing. Also, not all buses run 24/7

I live on the other side of the mission, so YMMV. Though I would suggest that surge pricing is one of ridesharing's strengths, and public transit could learn from it.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#146

Post by ensmartha » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

Not all gig companies are the same.

Uber is not a real business. Nothing about hiring a driver or maintaining or running a car is cheaper now than before Uber. Uber will never be profitable unless people are willing to pay the same amount as for regular taxis or for a private driver (i.e. expensive).

Airbnb on the other hand is a real and vastly profitable business. Yes there need to be tighter regulations because we don’t want Airbnb everywhere. That will have a non-trivial effect on its business. But even after regulation it remains a very profitable and highly appealing consumer and business product.

The other difference is that Uber just gets you from A to B. I will never remember the car nor the driver. Even if the driving experience is great, I won’t be telling my friends about it.

Airbnb on the other hand provides memorable lifetime experiences.

No comparison.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#147

Post by YeahSureWhyNot » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #96

throwaway713 wrote: post #76

Stupid question: but how is this the case? The fare I pay for an Uber or Lyft seems much higher than the time/car/insurance cost of driving myself ($30-$50 for a 25 min ride to SFO). But the drivers don’t get much of that fare, so I assumed the bulk of the money went to Uber/Lyft. But they’re badly in the red... so where is the money going? I’m missing something here.

The drivers do get most of the fare--but, properly accounting for costs, a lot of that slice "goes to" their cost of operating the car for the ride.

drivers get a little more than just half of the fare, uber keeps more than 1/3

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#148

Post by paxys » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #118

paxys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"R&D" usually includes all engineering expenses on financial reports, which for a company like Uber is the vast majority of operating expenses.

But in this case they clearly don't: Operations and support ($864m), Sales and marketing ($1.2b), General and administrative ($1.6b). They have bloated costs all over. Easy to do when you're the hottest VC backed company around, but the clock is ticking and they'll probably trim a lot of fat.

Yeah my point was people shouldn't look at it and think "self driving car research". Every engineer at Uber is paid out of that budget.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#149

Post by rjkennedy98 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

jngreenlee wrote: post #127

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

"In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exploitative jobs" Sure, but neither you or I get to decide that qualification. Only the person doing the job does. We don't really know what fits their lives or what options they have. I don't like gig stuff/sharing economy (or the big 'unicorns' associated with it) either...but it is "another option" for many people that wouldn't have one, esp. lower skill…

I feel like this misses something crucial to how most of these arrangements work: the worker is unable to put value on the gig. That is the real asymmetry. The gig worker's car wears down, requires gas, oil changes, and gets beat up by the road, but from his perspective he sees $25. Do you think Uber would even try to estimate that number?! (which they almost certainly could). Its essentially capitalization on a huge information asymmetry.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#150

Post by RandallBrown » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #42

standardUser wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between taxi fares and Uber/Lyft fares has all but vanished. People were willing to pay taxi rates all along, now they are doing so and getting what is arguably a much better service.

> now they are doing so and getting what is arguably a much better service. Only until Uber and Lyft run out of cash (a few more quarters based on cash on hand), at which point taxi fares will rise to properly reflect the actual cost of the service. People will choose a combination of walking, public transit, traditional cab companies, and perhaps an e-scooter and/or bicycle. We lived before Uber and Lyft, we'll live…

I don't believe that Uber/Lyft/Someone can't operate a ride sharing service at a profit. Taxis have done it for decades and now that the technologies have been invented, I don't see any reason Uber/Lyft can't ever be profitable. They may not be profitable enough to justify the amount of investment they've received, but they'll likely still exist in some for or another.

The cat is out of the bag. Nobody is going back to taxis.