191–200 of 201 posts
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I'd bet on Google, Tesla, and Mercedes before Uber, since they all have vehicles with more than a week on the road and cash-positive revenue streams to support further development. Uber burned through ~30% of their $11B in cash just in 2016 alone.
Uber will be able to get cash in the future if self driving tech matures to transition. It'll be a multi billion dollar opportunity, capital will be lining up to invest in the ride hailing market leader.
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>Uber is footing an addiction to cheap transport nobody knows how to satiate. Just ride a bike. Not an option in the burbs, for sure, but taking an uber is not an efficiency gain the way public transit or bicycles are. IMHO low density communities will die. They cannot be saved.
Bikes aren't an option in a lot of cities, either. I live ~1.5mi from my office in Atlanta, but I'm nowhere near crazy enough to ride a bike down Piedmont Rd.
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Uber has done nearly everything right. I think its main vulnerability is that its laborers are a fickle bunch and Uber hasn't done enough to inspire any loyalty. All Uber drivers I talk to alternate between Uber and Lyft and exploit any promotions or incentives either firm offers. Uber has the opportunity to revolutionize not just logistics but also on-demand employment, but has lagged in the latter, leaving the door…
Why the downvotes? I saw a couple replies why this isn't a viable strategy for Uber, but it doesn't make his post of low quality, does it?
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By beating people to market with self driving cars. That's the reason Uber is pushing it.
Is there any evidence that Uber is even on par with the self-driving technology of Google, Cruise, or Tesla?
https://newsroom.uber.com/san-francisco-your-self-driving-ub...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-self...
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There's evidence that all the big players have top talent, deep pockets, and are staying abreast of the research, which is humming along. Insomuch as they're committed, there's no good reason to believe any one of them is out of the running, or more than a couple years or so behind the peloton. Because deploying Robotaxi fleets will be so capital intensive, no single company is likely to dominate the way Uber has in…
Right, I wasn't suggesting Uber was hopelessly behind the other major players, but that it seems unlikely they'll beat everyone else to market. If they can't maintain their market share in a driverless car world, it's difficult to imagine how they can justify their current valuation.
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> Most people don't want 'on demand' employment, they want stability. Why can't they have both? Broadly speaking, the forces of supply and demand are quite stable. Right now it's difficult to find jobs for 10 hours per week or 80 hours per week, if you happen to want one. While I appreciate the historic role of unions, labor laws are unfortunately the reason that Uber has not made drivers W2 employees. It's sad that…
That ignores common sense. If Uber is more profitable by circumventing W2 regulations it will do so. There is no morality in capitalism, only worship of the bottom line. Businesses don't care about "reasonable" regulations, they care about profit. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. A corporation is not a person, it can't be expected to think like one. Instead people must elect representatives that impos…
Without defining the time horizon you are referring to for profitability, you are making a non-statement, one that is easily demonstrated to be both trivially true and trivially false.
Firms forego profit all the time when they invest in uncertain R&D rather than returning profits to shareholders in the form of a dividend.
Similarly, firms often invest in building their brand even though it is very difficult to quantify brand marketing ROI.
My argument is that Uber is making a foolish choice by trying to get away with 1099 status for employees... or in other words, Uber is betting on the wrong horse, or investing poorly in its future. The same folly would apply to any short-sighted business decision.
This is where time enters. Uber's strategy makes its financials look better in the short term at the expense of a sustainable long-term strategy.
Market forces don't get much chance to help discipline this decision, since the only actors are Uber's investors and board and those of Uber's competitors. Regulators haven't done anything to force the issue yet. So like any other decision that might be made in a shortsighted way or a more appropriate long-term-value-based way, Uber is simply making a suboptimal business decision.
It is not a foregone conclusion that regulators must be the ones to nudge Uber into the "right" decision. Firms make mistakes all the time, and other firms are ready to step in to correct the mistake and generate profit in the process.
So only if you view Uber as a permanent fixture does regulatory involvement seem necessary. Uber is far from a permanent fixture. In my view, Uber underestimates the importance of winning over high quality drivers vs paying drivers fractionally less simply to make its books look better in the short term.
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That ignores common sense. If Uber is more profitable by circumventing W2 regulations it will do so. There is no morality in capitalism, only worship of the bottom line. Businesses don't care about "reasonable" regulations, they care about profit. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. A corporation is not a person, it can't be expected to think like one. Instead people must elect representatives that impos…
+1
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Why the downvotes? I saw a couple replies why this isn't a viable strategy for Uber, but it doesn't make his post of low quality, does it?
I didn't downvote, but it reads very fanboy-ish, to the extent that I wondered whether that person has invested in Uber.
have people considered this may eventually lead to Google acquiring Uber? There is the advising CEO Travis Kalanick bit in there.
Relatedly, I booked an Uber last night from within the Google Maps app on my phone, and the entire experience was in-app -- route selection, driver pick-up tracking, in-ride tracking, and drop-off confirmation. That's a whole lot tighter integration than I've seen in the past. The rumor-monger in me wants to read all sorts of acquisition talks into that level of product integration. (Which is great for another reason…
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I'd bet on Google, Tesla, and Mercedes before Uber, since they all have vehicles with more than a week on the road and cash-positive revenue streams to support further development. Uber burned through ~30% of their $11B in cash just in 2016 alone.
Uber will be able to get cash in the future if self driving tech matures to transition. It'll be a multi billion dollar opportunity, capital will be lining up to invest in the ride hailing market leader.