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G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

nytimes.com

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Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#71

Post by luckydata »

cmpaul wrote: post #23

The "short-term car rental hubs... where people who do not own cars can pick up a vehicle and drive for Lyft to earn money" is a nice idea in the short-term. I still think Uber has the right idea long-term with a completely autonomous fleet, but once those hit the market, there will still be a pretty large demand for NON-autonomous vehicles -- take my parents, for instance, who refuse to get into a car not driven by…

how often do your parents have the chance to refuse a ride in a car not driven by a human? Do cars with cat drivers count? What about chimps?

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#72

Post by cvs268 »

Shivetya wrote: post #56
danielbln wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that just a marketing and PR problem, first and foremost? "The new [insert brand here], safer than any other vehicle ever developed [insert statistic here]. It will bring you where you want to go, fast, safe and while you can tend to the things in life that really matter [insert family/reading/working montage]." I'm no adman, but I think it won't be too difficult to sell this. And if all fails, lower insurance…

One area I haven't seen mentioned is the loss of human interaction. For many just having someone to talk to/at during the trip is needed.

Eliza and Siri can accompany them...

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#73

Post by hyperliner »

x5n1 wrote: post #50
cmpaul wrote: post #23

The "short-term car rental hubs... where people who do not own cars can pick up a vehicle and drive for Lyft to earn money" is a nice idea in the short-term. I still think Uber has the right idea long-term with a completely autonomous fleet, but once those hit the market, there will still be a pretty large demand for NON-autonomous vehicles -- take my parents, for instance, who refuse to get into a car not driven by…

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 time, clean and cheap.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#74

Post by snthd »

wheaties wrote: post #14

Not to hijack, but how do we stop esentially duplicate URLs in "new" see ( http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/technology/gm-invests-i... ) not matching?

use the canonical url defined in the html (" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/technology/gm-invests-in-l...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonical_link_element

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#76

Post by ape4 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

I don't know whether this is a real difference or not, but Lyft "feels" like a much nicer company than Uber. I'm not thrilled about Lyft's rampant hipster-branding, but Uber seems like a company run by pricks. Maybe it's just because they're the underdog, but I'm really rooting for Lyft.

This is a space where "niceness" matters. Since a lot of it is all about human interactions.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#77

Post by petra »

crb002 wrote: post #34

Brilliant. Concierge drivers consume very new cars, decreasing use of older ones thus driving GM sales.

And for lyft, it gives a more adaptive workforce - say there's increase in demand for SUV's - the workforce can more easily adapt.

That seems like an important thing when you look at uber's recent UberHop experiment - using SUV's as small ,almost on-demand mini buses for quite cheap. this looks like something that can grow very rapidly.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#78

Post by Naritai »

simonh wrote: post #59
exw wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I agree that this is probably the end state of this space, but I think this is much more Google's than Uber's vision - Uber is terrified of autonomous cars (since it eliminates the supply network effect of their driver network and opens up the space to anyone with deep pockets). Once autonomous cars become a reality, I think you are going to see a fierce battle between Uber and Google.

>Once autonomous cars become a reality, I think you are going to see a fierce battle between Uber and Google. Google Ventures invested $258M in Uber in 2013 and are one of it's largest shareholders.

That doesn't necessarily prove anything. Google and Apple were partners before Android.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#79

Post by softawre »

otterley wrote: post #68
digitalneal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who the heck wants to enter the GM tech culture?

It's an investment and probably a board seat. I doubt GM is going to interfere with their day to day engineering decisions.

From the article:

> Daniel Ammann, president of G.M., will join Lyft’s board of directors.

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