7 ms·

Uber is Fucked

56 points by noahmbarr 10y ago

verylongaccount 10y ago
Aren't self driving cars good for Uber? My understanding is that Uber's plan in the event that self driving cars become practical is to have a fleet of them which can be summoned by users on demand.
- haney 10y ago
  That's assuming that the creators of the self driving car technology don't decide to operate their own network of cars and cut out the middle man.
  - cheald 10y ago
    Google's an investor in Uber, it's not difficult to connect the dots - Google is interested in applications of its tech, not in owning the entire stack top to bottom. Self-driving cars are very certainly the future of Uber, and once self-driving tech is mass-available Uber will have the same accessibility to it that Google or Tesla or whomever else does. At that point, they're competing on price and service quality, just like they do with Lyft and Sidecar right now. I don't see self-driving tech becoming a major sticking point, because it's not like manufacturers are going to only be manufacturing self-driving cars for their own usage once the regulatory hurdles are cleared.
  - georgecmu 10y ago
    Uber has aggressively invested into developing its own self-driving technology. This has been extensively discussed on HN. See some nice photos here: http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...
- mrweasel 10y ago
  I would imagine that Uber would be investing in self driving cars. I don't think there's as much money in taxiing people around as Uber and others initially thought. Even with the taxi market being artificially constrained the number of taxi driver millionaires seems to be a little low. At least in some countries and cities getting a taxi at the right times have been a hassle, and somewhat expensive. So even if, like Uber, you can expand the marked and steal customer from traditional taxies, how much money is there really to be made? Getting the profit that currently falls to the drivers seems like a logical next step, if they want to increase their own profit.
tmaly 10y ago
There are a ton of different regulatory jurisdictions that this whole self-driving tech will have to get through before I would worry.
chollida1 10y ago
> Self driving cars are coming fast. It’s largely a solved problem. Something about the Ninety-ninety rule seems appropriate here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule I think self driving cars are much closer to 10 years out than the "today" that the author asserts, but I think everyone agree's that we've reached the point where they are coming no matter what. To give the author credit I went into reading this thinking he was absurd but he does make a good point, some of the points I think are over sold, like planned obsolescence but I think his thesis is sound. One point I'll make on Uber's behalf...... Two of my all time favorite books are: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314 https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kapla... This history of Go computing. and Ben Horowitz The hard thing about hard things. https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205 https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0... Both do a very good job of bringing the reader into the chaotic environment that occurs when startups are in trouble and both have a very similar message. When startups get in trouble having very powerful investors and mentors can make a huge difference. Uber has some very influential backers. See: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/investors https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/investors If/When times get tough, they have people who have a vested interest in seeing them succeed. People who can get them talking to the correct people at the car manufacturers to convince them to use Uber's platform over an internally created one. If self driving laws drag on many years before they are settled then Uber may be fucked in the end but there isn't any reason why they can't be a cash printing machine over the next 10- 20 years while self driving cars replace humans. As to car companies cutting out uber, there is this..... http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...
- Blaaguuu 10y ago
  I had a hearty chuckle at the "It’s largely a solved problem." line. It does seem like in the next 5 years or so we'll be about 99% of the way to fully automated vehicles that can pick you up and take you anywhere a 'normal' car and driver can go... But that last 1% is a bunch of incredibly difficult problems that could easily take another 10-20 years.
inthewoods 10y ago
To me, #1 is classic "inside the Valley" thinking - not recognizing that the world outside of the Valley is vastly different. As a simple example, as far as I know, no one is currently attempting autonomous cars in any place with more severe or varied weather conditions (e.g. snow).
- ttmb 10y ago
  In fact, Uber is. They have a research center in Pittsburgh, which has plenty of weather and terrible roads. Cars are seen regularly dodging students around CMU.
  - bichiliad 10y ago
    They are, and very aggressively so. They bought up a ton of CMU's research department to do so[1]. [1]: http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber-self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ube...
    - inthewoods 10y ago
      That's great to hear. Is the author's contention that Uber "doesn't have the tech" accurate?
      - apendleton 10y ago
        The author mentions the CMU acquisition. I think their contention is that it's not enough, because Uber doesn't have access to the kinds of vehicle telemetry data its competitors do that would be necessary to train good self-driving car models. Google, and other companies with existing advanced vehicles on the road, have thousands of cars in the wild now with suits of sensors collecting telemetry and phoning home. Uber contracts drivers who drive their own cars, so it's not benefiting in a vehicle-telemetry sense from the drives it's arranging in the way it could be and its competitors do. I think this is probably a solvable problem, though.
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bko 10y ago
The conclusion at the end is that car manufacturers are better suited to benefit from driverless cars as Uber is not in the business of building or maintaining a fleet of cards. But by that same reasoning, manufacturers are not in the business of dispatching taxis. I'm skeptical that manufacturers would be that nimble to capitalize on the inevitable. That's also not their business model. Building out such an effort in such a large organization would be a challenge. It would be much cheaper for car manufacturers to partner with or buy a company like Uber. In regard to Uber not having data to create the machine learning models needed for self-driving cards, they could buy that data or start building it up themselves. Google doesn't have a monopoly on strapping cameras and sensors to cars. And Uber certainly has enough capital required. Besides, this is a core strategy for Uber while it's still a moon-shot for Google.
- galdosdi 10y ago
  But it's way easier to enter the dispatch app business than the car manufacturing business, as is demonstrated by Uber's menagerie of competitors. While car manufacturers are hardly the nimblest they're not brain dead and are already exploring related stuff (example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/07/18/gm-launches-new-car-sharing-service-in-d-c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/07/1...) If we reach a day where there is some company, call them company U which has a successful dispatch app business, and another company, call them company C, which has just successfully demonstrated (and passed regulatory hurdles for) a self driving car, what do you think will be easier and cheaper and quicker? For U to develop/acquire/license self-driving car technology or for C to develop/acquire/license a dispatch app? C could probably pay very little to license a dispatch app from any of the many vendors. Even if it's not popular before, it will be once it's the only dispatch app that dispatches SELF DRIVING CARS! But if U tried to license self driving from C, U would probably have very little leverage and end up signing a contract where U runs the show but ships most of the revenues to C. C would be like Microsoft in the 80s/90s, and U would be like a generic IBM PC compatible computer vendor.
vonnik 10y ago
This is a piece of amateur speculation making huge assumptions about advances in technology, and about Uber's ability to adapt to those advances. One crucial thing to remember, when considering the threat Uber faces from traditional car manufacturers, is that Uber is a software company and they are not. It has a huge advantage in product development, and stands just as good a chance as they do of coming out with self-driving cars for ride-sharing.
- benologist 10y ago
  Why is that even important, let alone crucial? Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products, MLB created a Netflix-like platform to offer media companies as a service, Walmart have made important contributions to open source etc. The number of steps between Uber's competitors becoming as competent as Uber at software is basically "1. decide to".
  - vonnik 10y ago
    Attracting the talent to build a usable product is one of the most important steps in creating any business, or line of business in the case of a large company. That talent is scarce, and tends to prefer certain companies over others. I speak as a former recruiter and current employer, who has had to grapple with the difficulty of hiring good software engineers. The software engineers I have known and tried to recruit tend to want to work for companies that are more like Google and less like General Motors. The statement Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products is manifestly untrue. It's hard to get the right people, and it's equally hard to coordinate all their activities to get a successful product over the finish line. The companies that have healthy cultures of software engineering and digital product management and design are way, way ahead of everyone else. And those companies are in the minority.
    - benologist 10y ago
      General Motors is another great example of a "non-software" company that effortlessly became staffed to rival Uber's employees - http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-startup-for-more-than-1-billion/ http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-st...
vannevar 10y ago
Uber is in trouble, but not for the reasons cited here. Driverless cars are not coming as fast as the author thinks. Even in the example he gives, his friend has to drive the Tesla at some point. This means that it has a driver the entire time, even if he isn't doing much most of the trip. Widespread use of driverless (as opposed to self-driving) cars is still 10 years away. Uber's problem is not that they're going to get cut out of the driverless car business; it's that their customers are really the drivers, and Uber offers very little value to them for the cut they're taking. Uber is just a dispatch service, which is rapidly becoming a low-margin commodity business. To the driver, Uber is an app and a sticker. A driver just needs fares in their area, and as Austin has shown, with modern geo-enabled phones, it's easy to jump into the dispatch business to fill that need.
- qyv 10y ago
  I think this is a point that often gets glossed-over when talking about the advances in self-driving cars: Self-driving != Driverless Self-driving cars is largely a technology problem, and one that we have made great advances in the last 5-10 years. Driverless cars are a legal/social/political problem that we have barely started to look at yet. Self-driving is a driving tool, like cruise-control, but the human driver is still ultimately responsible for the vehicle. Driverless on the other hand places the responsibility for the vehicle, and it's occupants, onto the vehicle itself. Driverless implies that you should be able to use it while you yourself are not capable of operating a vehicle. That is a massive step, and it is something that has never been done before. All other forms of transportation, despite advanced automation, still defers to a human in the end. I would say that true driverless cars is still a significant amount of time away, despite our advances in self-driving tech.
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- throwaway48511 10y ago
  >Uber is just a dispatch service I don't think you are taking into account UberPool. HN comments almost never do, perhaps because programmers are generally upper income and do not feel a need to trade money for inconvenience, but UberX is basically a legacy product and now presented as more of an upgrade if you're in a hurry, rather than the default mode. UberPool is everything. A network of cars buzzing around the city dynamically routing from one task (transport passenger, transport package, deliver food, etc) to the next, and each task is cheaper because it can share ride segments with other customers. That is where the winner-take-all argument comes from - the bigger the network, the more efficiently Uber can pack multiple tasks into the same driver-hours, with less delay (more jobs means the car doesn't have to go as far out of its way to share capacity). Uber is more than dispatch - it's quality control, reputation, dispute resolution, capacity planning, payment escrow, (soon to be) routing (it bought a few mapping companies), commercial insurance (try buying that on your own), and increasingly, the efficiency provided by combining multiple tasks in each car. When people call Uber a taxi service - when is the last time a taxi offered you a cheaper ride if you agreed to share the car for 5 blocks with a guy 10 blocks down the road? Disclaimer: I used to work there. Throwaway because I'd rather keep identifying information off my personal account. Opinion is my own, I do not speak for Uber, etc.
hackaflocka 10y ago
> Car manufacturers will begin flirting with building, owning, and deploying their own cars…via their own apps. Music cos. were supposed to do something similar to iTunes etc. Didn't happen. > Cars will appear when ordered through the app. They will drive off and disappear when you step out of the car. When running low on fuel, cars will coordinate trips to tucked away re-charging depots to be smartly refilled with electricity. You mean in about 20 years time? > Then car manufacturers will drastically start reducing the cost of operating these vehicles. With magic?
slaunchwise 10y ago
> Self driving cars are coming fast. It’s largely a solved problem. Come to Boston.
SCAQTony 10y ago
Predictions will always look 100% certain if you presume the cause/problem will never be mitigated. Search up "The horse manure problem: "...In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. ..." https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/ https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-...
- deleted 10y ago
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digitalpacman 10y ago
Good luck for it to be legal that a drunk person can be in the drivers seat of a car. That's going to take 20-30 years. I'm sorry but there isn't "you can't operate an elevator while drunk" law and people in police elevators pulling you over to the first floor to give you a ticket. Until they remove the ability for drivers to actually drive, they are going to be legally responsible. Uber is fine for the next 30-50 years.
kin 10y ago
Isn't Google invested in Uber? Didn't Uber order 100,000 units of Mercedes vehicles to do something with? Isn't GM partnered with Lyft to accomplish a self-driving taxi service? I don't know, I think Uber and Lyft are well aware of the progress in self-driving vehicle technology and their actions point more towards them behind involved in the process as opposed to being left in the dust. The only group of people that are "fucked" are the current drivers whose jobs will be automated.
- dave_sullivan 10y ago
  Let's say that's true; the folks at Uber are smart and they'll figure out self driving cars. Why does anyone think Uber will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some self driving cars and opening their own service? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. Uber is in a low-margin business where the only way to really increase profit is to screw your customers or employees or both. If self driving cars are supposed to be the company's savior, good luck being the only organization on the planet that can use them. Having lived through Webvan, Groupon, Zynga, and countless others, I see disturbingly similar patterns in Uber.
  - rco8786 10y ago
    You can basically just swap in any company in any industry to your comment...keeping up pace with technological changes, competitors entering your market, and maintaining a profit margin are just normal challenges that every business faces. Let's see: > Let's say that's true; the folks at Google are smart and they'll figure out artificial intelligence. Why does anyone think Google will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying artificial intelligence tools and opening their own AI service? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. > Let's say that's true; the folks at Apple are smart and they'll figure out personal computers. Why does anyone think Apple will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some computer parts and opening their own computer store? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. > Let's say that's true; the folks at SpaceX are smart and they'll figure out re-usable rockets. Why does anyone think SpaceX will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some re-usable rockets and opening their own space travel agency? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has.
vermontdevil 10y ago
Uber does have access to car data - the cars Uber drivers use. I don't know if Uber is using this data to help adapt over the long term. But it's something they do have access right now.
rsp1984 10y ago
By the way, robotics teams have traditionally been steeped in rules-based AI’s. Essentially enormous if-then decision logic tree. Even if they are using the most advanced self-learning algorithms, huge amounts of data are required to train, perfect, and ship such a system. Uber has access to essentially NONE of it. Sorry but there's so much BS condensed in just these two sentences that it immediately disqualifies the whole article. Of course robotics software isn't based on giant decision trees, wtf. Then what's a self-learning algorithm? Who says that Uber couldn't just license self-driving tech or data? And by the way the plural of AI is AIs, without the apostrophe.
dogma1138 10y ago
Self driving cars that are beyond simply assisted driving or and overseen autopilot are probably 10-20 years away. It would take quite a bit of additional improvement in tech and massive legislation for driverless cars to become a common thing. I don't understand why people continue to mix self driving and driverless those are 2 separate things. Autopilot or not I don't see most countries change the law of both hands on the wheel (unless you need to operate another system in the car in which case 1 hand might be taken off it) any time soon. Infact with autopilot becoming more and more popular you might see actually increased enforcement of this law because It's another revenue stream for local authorities. Also if anything Uber is the one that stems to benefit from driverless car since they won't have to pay the drivers any more. With driverless cars I see their business model becoming something like "want to save 30% on your monthly car payments? sign up your car to Uber!", Uber can even offer financing options to people at considerably discounted rates in exchange for a mandatory opt in period. Heck Uber can go Zip car and simply manage their own fleet when driverless cars become a true reality, it might even be easier for companies like Uber to get a driverless car before the general population, they've already built their platform and have a user base, the drivers are this point are a necessary liability for them the minute they can dump them they will. And if the car makers would want to offer a similar service themselves well Uber can just come in as a service provider offer the car manufacturers access to it's user base and platform in exchange for a usage fee it would be even better for them since they could dump a huge chunk of their existing liability onto their partners.
- troymc 10y ago
  As soon as there's strong evidence (from multiple credible sources) that self-driving tech reduces accidents and fatalities, the government conversation will switch from, "How shall we regulate this?" to "Oh! These are like seat belts. How shall we encourage them?" In other words, governments will speed up adoption, eventually. The owners of the car fleets will be the car manufacturers because they're the ones who can pay the least per car. They don't have to pay any markup! The self-driving tech will come from Google, Tesla, Apple, or the like, not Uber. See the blog post for the reasons why.
  - 10y ago
sethish 10y ago
I think the author's spellcheck is fucked. Probably also their chain of reasoning.
cjbprime 10y ago
> Self driving cars are coming fast. Yes, and Uber is working on them. On HN as the same time as this article: http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...
whazor 10y ago
Uber has volume and the correct branding, both important parts which a company like Audi will need.
payne92 10y ago
Self-driving cruise control is largely a solved problem, but 100% self-driving is a long time away. Ref: Boston winter, 2015.
niftich 10y ago
1. Self driving cars are not coming fast enough, but their impact on Uber's business model is unclear. They've been investing in self-driving cars [1], but they've also been expanding into parcel delivery, which needs a human to perform the actual contact with the customer [2]. 2. Like the article says, Uber indeed is collecting sensor data in Pittsburgh, to train self-driving algorithms. They may or may not be able to deliver an algorithm rivaling the quality of Google or other players. It's contradictory to say Uber has access to no car data, while pointing out that Uber is collecting car sensor data on their own. The passengers who use Uber may not be very brand-loyal, but that assumes their business model is entirely predicated on customer fares. In truth, their business model is entirely predicated on burning VC money to establish first mover advantage and mindshare, and if they successfully pivot into profitability they will presumably alter business models. Licensing self-driving tech, charging for rush parcel deliveries, providing concierge services -- those are all viable directions in which they can pivot. 3. Being in the business of fleet maintenance is not so fun, and location-aware dispatching, load balancing, etc, requires the sort of secret sauce that, among a few others, Uber has developed. Car manufactures won't engage in this as their core business; they're far more likely to partner with some startup Uber competitor, or Uber itself. But car manufactures aren't like airplanes where the cost of a single unit is so high that it's much more economical to lease indefinitely. Many people in fact own cars -- the very, very profitable used car market is evidence of this, which unlike most new cars, actually has decent margins. While it's true that carmakers have subsidiary banks that offer financing, those instruments enable a larger portion of people to 'buy cars' than otherwise, increasing the total volume of cars delivered. Extremely widespread, mainstream car-hailing on demand would drastically drop the demand for car ownership (in terms of raw numbers) across the board, making it an awful value proposition for car manufactures. [1] https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ [2] https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works
sokoloff 10y ago
> There’s a good reason cars start falling apart after their warranty period — They have been carefully engineered to specifically have this happen, a term called “planned obsolesce”. Manufacturers want to sell more cars, and if cars last longer, they sell way less new cars. My experiences are vastly different. Neither my Mercedes nor my wife's Honda have "fallen apart" after the warranty period. MB is 216K miles and 18 years old and Honda is ~170K miles and 11 years old. Both have averaged under $200 in parts per year, mostly brakes and tires.
- niftich 10y ago
  Indeed. Obsolescence does occur with cars -- just like most consumer items -- but it's either: - technical or functional obsolescence (eg. no rearview backup camera, carburetors replaced with fuel injection), or - style obsolescence (eg. station wagons, quirky headlamps) because styling is a subjective fashion statement. While this is arguably a sub-type of planned obsolescence, it affects every single object that has visual presence, from clothes to smartphones to household appliances. The kind of 'intentionally crippled engineering designed to fail after the warranty period' the author proposes does not exist, because new cars are perfectly capable of getting themselves sold on their merits, and not because all old cars have been intentionally crippled. In fact, selling secondhand cars is quite often profitable, while selling new cars, outside of the luxury/SUV segment, has notoriously low margins.
- elf25 10y ago
  Planned obsolesce was discussed by the late Alvin Toffler in his book 'Future Shock' in 1970. A great read! I believe it often occurs in the part manufacturing such as cutting costs. Let's replace this metal gear with a plastic gear and save $x.00 per unit. But every 'person on the street' knows that a metal gear will outlast a cheap plastic gear. Now we've just engineerd in the obsolesce due to bean-counter cost-cutting. But think of Apple (or Dell of you prefer) and the iPhone or iMac. What is the lifespan of the avg. product? 3 yrs? 5 yrs? 10 yrs? 20 yrs? Computational devices are pretty much obsolete in 5 years (ten years for sure if you feel like arguing about 5 yrs.) as new technology is developed and surpasses the old. We now have to design something that works well for that expected time period and keep mfg. costs low.
whack 10y ago
Even if you accept the author's assumption that driverless cars are very close, his argument rests on the following premise: Every single car manufacturer will launch their own uber-like app, market their app directly to the end-user, and maintain a fleet of taxis nationwide, in order to compete with Uber. I find the above premise hard to believe. Why would a company like Nissan take on the massive marketing/logistics challenges required to run a nationwide taxi service? Do we really think the market can support 10+ car manufacturers each running their own Uber-like app? It's so much more likely that each car manufacturer will simply continue trying to sell as much as possible, and let the buyers decide how they want to make use of the car. Even if they do decide to "put their inventory cars to work," they will do so by loaning the cars out to an aggregator like Uber, who will then use these cars in order to run a taxi service. The idea that every car manufacturer will decide to cut Uber out, and enter the taxi business directly, just doesn't sound plausible nor smart.
- deegles 10y ago
  What I hope will happen is a Red Hat-style company emerging that will maintain an open-source car sharing app/webservice. They would sell support or host each city's car-sharing service for a fee, or just let people set up their own. This way, cities could run the service at cost (or maybe even subsidize it) and drivers would take home more. Or they could use the revenue for the city instead of having it leave the local economy.
- warcher 10y ago
  Yeah, the car companies are also fucked. Prepare for massive consolidation on that front. One or perhaps two or three car manufacturers will swallow the whole market as demand craters. (We all own our own cars because it's a necessity at this point. It won't stay that way in a driverless future. Nor will cars be the status signifier they currently are.) I actually think the form factor most cars come in will become obsolete-- I think they'll be mostly vans and buses to cope with economies of scale on the rider front and to handle rush hour surges. Who makes the bus you last rode on? Do you know? I know I don't, nor do I care. I mean, Uber is totally fucked if this comes down the pipe and they're not running things, that's undeniable. Their value proposition is running this two sided marketplace that's going to turn into a one sided marketplace. And yeah, putting together a mobile app is a completely different universe than becoming a major auto manufacturer, or a robotics manufacturer of unprecedented scale. (Or in reality, both.)
mrcwinn 10y ago
An analysis of a business today doesn't mean much for the state of a business tomorrow. Companies and situations change. So, for the people happily working for Uber, probably don't quit your job as the author suggests.
larrik 10y ago
> There’s a good reason cars start falling apart after their warranty period — They have been carefully engineered to specifically have this happen, a term called “planned obsolesce”. I don't believe this, and I don't believe the author knows anything about cars, from reading this.
Grue3 10y ago
Fusion is also pretty much a solved problem. They even have that one experimental reactor in Europe. The power generation industry is fucked!
eastbayjake 10y ago
It's extreme to say Uber is effed, but it would be reasonable to suggest that Uber is not a ~$60 billion business and that most of its long-term value will be as a dispatch service with an established customer base that gets acquired by a GM/Google self-driving fleet operator for less than its current value.
heisenbit 10y ago
Ueber has strategic challenges as transportation solution provider. The way I see it Ueber - has few barriers to entry in it's business besides brand. - scaling up, maturing is dulling the brand - as a dominant player with a large war chest it may engage in price wars but as a dominant player it will risk regulatory trouble when overdoing it. - established players will adjust e.g. Taxis orgs. with their app or regional/local public transport integration with car sharing - while self driving cars may be a little off the concept of ad-hoc renting a car without a driver is catching on in Germany. Like a taxi one rents a car by the minute and drops the car when arriving. Daimler/Smart, BMW and German public railways are all in. This seems also the proving ground for small electric cars - operating a fleet of your own vehicle is probably providing some insights. Millennial car ownership is dropping vs. earlier generation. So the underlying fundamentals for new transportation solutions are strong. However it is far from clear what role Ueber will have in the medium term.

56 points by noahmbarr 10y ago

Aren't self driving cars good for Uber? My understanding is that Uber's plan in the event that self driving cars become practical is to have a fleet of them which can be summoned by users on demand.

haney 10y ago
That's assuming that the creators of the self driving car technology don't decide to operate their own network of cars and cut out the middle man.
- cheald 10y ago
  Google's an investor in Uber, it's not difficult to connect the dots - Google is interested in applications of its tech, not in owning the entire stack top to bottom. Self-driving cars are very certainly the future of Uber, and once self-driving tech is mass-available Uber will have the same accessibility to it that Google or Tesla or whomever else does. At that point, they're competing on price and service quality, just like they do with Lyft and Sidecar right now. I don't see self-driving tech becoming a major sticking point, because it's not like manufacturers are going to only be manufacturing self-driving cars for their own usage once the regulatory hurdles are cleared.
- georgecmu 10y ago
  Uber has aggressively invested into developing its own self-driving technology. This has been extensively discussed on HN. See some nice photos here: http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...
mrweasel 10y ago
I would imagine that Uber would be investing in self driving cars. I don't think there's as much money in taxiing people around as Uber and others initially thought. Even with the taxi market being artificially constrained the number of taxi driver millionaires seems to be a little low. At least in some countries and cities getting a taxi at the right times have been a hassle, and somewhat expensive. So even if, like Uber, you can expand the marked and steal customer from traditional taxies, how much money is there really to be made? Getting the profit that currently falls to the drivers seems like a logical next step, if they want to increase their own profit.

tmaly 10y ago

There are a ton of different regulatory jurisdictions that this whole self-driving tech will have to get through before I would worry.

chollida1 10y ago

> Self driving cars are coming fast. It’s largely a solved problem. Something about the Ninety-ninety rule seems appropriate here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule I think self driving cars are much closer to 10 years out than the "today" that the author asserts, but I think everyone agree's that we've reached the point where they are coming no matter what. To give the author credit I went into reading this thinking he was absurd but he does make a good point, some of the points I think are over sold, like planned obsolescence but I think his thesis is sound. One point I'll make on Uber's behalf...... Two of my all time favorite books are: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kaplan/dp/0140257314 https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Silicon-Adventure-Jerry-Kapla... This history of Go computing. and Ben Horowitz The hard thing about hard things. https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205 https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0... Both do a very good job of bringing the reader into the chaotic environment that occurs when startups are in trouble and both have a very similar message. When startups get in trouble having very powerful investors and mentors can make a huge difference. Uber has some very influential backers. See: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/investors https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/investors If/When times get tough, they have people who have a vested interest in seeing them succeed. People who can get them talking to the correct people at the car manufacturers to convince them to use Uber's platform over an internally created one. If self driving laws drag on many years before they are settled then Uber may be fucked in the end but there isn't any reason why they can't be a cash printing machine over the next 10- 20 years while self driving cars replace humans. As to car companies cutting out uber, there is this..... http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...

Blaaguuu 10y ago
I had a hearty chuckle at the "It’s largely a solved problem." line. It does seem like in the next 5 years or so we'll be about 99% of the way to fully automated vehicles that can pick you up and take you anywhere a 'normal' car and driver can go... But that last 1% is a bunch of incredibly difficult problems that could easily take another 10-20 years.

inthewoods 10y ago

To me, #1 is classic "inside the Valley" thinking - not recognizing that the world outside of the Valley is vastly different. As a simple example, as far as I know, no one is currently attempting autonomous cars in any place with more severe or varied weather conditions (e.g. snow).

ttmb 10y ago
In fact, Uber is. They have a research center in Pittsburgh, which has plenty of weather and terrible roads. Cars are seen regularly dodging students around CMU.
- bichiliad 10y ago
  They are, and very aggressively so. They bought up a ton of CMU's research department to do so[1]. [1]: http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber-self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ube...
  - inthewoods 10y ago
    That's great to hear. Is the author's contention that Uber "doesn't have the tech" accurate?
    - apendleton 10y ago
      The author mentions the CMU acquisition. I think their contention is that it's not enough, because Uber doesn't have access to the kinds of vehicle telemetry data its competitors do that would be necessary to train good self-driving car models. Google, and other companies with existing advanced vehicles on the road, have thousands of cars in the wild now with suits of sensors collecting telemetry and phoning home. Uber contracts drivers who drive their own cars, so it's not benefiting in a vehicle-telemetry sense from the drives it's arranging in the way it could be and its competitors do. I think this is probably a solvable problem, though.
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bko 10y ago

The conclusion at the end is that car manufacturers are better suited to benefit from driverless cars as Uber is not in the business of building or maintaining a fleet of cards. But by that same reasoning, manufacturers are not in the business of dispatching taxis. I'm skeptical that manufacturers would be that nimble to capitalize on the inevitable. That's also not their business model. Building out such an effort in such a large organization would be a challenge. It would be much cheaper for car manufacturers to partner with or buy a company like Uber. In regard to Uber not having data to create the machine learning models needed for self-driving cards, they could buy that data or start building it up themselves. Google doesn't have a monopoly on strapping cameras and sensors to cars. And Uber certainly has enough capital required. Besides, this is a core strategy for Uber while it's still a moon-shot for Google.

galdosdi 10y ago
But it's way easier to enter the dispatch app business than the car manufacturing business, as is demonstrated by Uber's menagerie of competitors. While car manufacturers are hardly the nimblest they're not brain dead and are already exploring related stuff (example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/07/18/gm-launches-new-car-sharing-service-in-d-c/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2016/07/1...) If we reach a day where there is some company, call them company U which has a successful dispatch app business, and another company, call them company C, which has just successfully demonstrated (and passed regulatory hurdles for) a self driving car, what do you think will be easier and cheaper and quicker? For U to develop/acquire/license self-driving car technology or for C to develop/acquire/license a dispatch app? C could probably pay very little to license a dispatch app from any of the many vendors. Even if it's not popular before, it will be once it's the only dispatch app that dispatches SELF DRIVING CARS! But if U tried to license self driving from C, U would probably have very little leverage and end up signing a contract where U runs the show but ships most of the revenues to C. C would be like Microsoft in the 80s/90s, and U would be like a generic IBM PC compatible computer vendor.

vonnik 10y ago

This is a piece of amateur speculation making huge assumptions about advances in technology, and about Uber's ability to adapt to those advances. One crucial thing to remember, when considering the threat Uber faces from traditional car manufacturers, is that Uber is a software company and they are not. It has a huge advantage in product development, and stands just as good a chance as they do of coming out with self-driving cars for ride-sharing.

benologist 10y ago
Why is that even important, let alone crucial? Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products, MLB created a Netflix-like platform to offer media companies as a service, Walmart have made important contributions to open source etc. The number of steps between Uber's competitors becoming as competent as Uber at software is basically "1. decide to".
- vonnik 10y ago
  Attracting the talent to build a usable product is one of the most important steps in creating any business, or line of business in the case of a large company. That talent is scarce, and tends to prefer certain companies over others. I speak as a former recruiter and current employer, who has had to grapple with the difficulty of hiring good software engineers. The software engineers I have known and tried to recruit tend to want to work for companies that are more like Google and less like General Motors. The statement Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products is manifestly untrue. It's hard to get the right people, and it's equally hard to coordinate all their activities to get a successful product over the finish line. The companies that have healthy cultures of software engineering and digital product management and design are way, way ahead of everyone else. And those companies are in the minority.
  - benologist 10y ago
    General Motors is another great example of a "non-software" company that effortlessly became staffed to rival Uber's employees - http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-startup-for-more-than-1-billion/ http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-st...

vannevar 10y ago

Uber is in trouble, but not for the reasons cited here. Driverless cars are not coming as fast as the author thinks. Even in the example he gives, his friend has to drive the Tesla at some point. This means that it has a driver the entire time, even if he isn't doing much most of the trip. Widespread use of driverless (as opposed to self-driving) cars is still 10 years away. Uber's problem is not that they're going to get cut out of the driverless car business; it's that their customers are really the drivers, and Uber offers very little value to them for the cut they're taking. Uber is just a dispatch service, which is rapidly becoming a low-margin commodity business. To the driver, Uber is an app and a sticker. A driver just needs fares in their area, and as Austin has shown, with modern geo-enabled phones, it's easy to jump into the dispatch business to fill that need.

qyv 10y ago
I think this is a point that often gets glossed-over when talking about the advances in self-driving cars: Self-driving != Driverless Self-driving cars is largely a technology problem, and one that we have made great advances in the last 5-10 years. Driverless cars are a legal/social/political problem that we have barely started to look at yet. Self-driving is a driving tool, like cruise-control, but the human driver is still ultimately responsible for the vehicle. Driverless on the other hand places the responsibility for the vehicle, and it's occupants, onto the vehicle itself. Driverless implies that you should be able to use it while you yourself are not capable of operating a vehicle. That is a massive step, and it is something that has never been done before. All other forms of transportation, despite advanced automation, still defers to a human in the end. I would say that true driverless cars is still a significant amount of time away, despite our advances in self-driving tech.
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throwaway48511 10y ago
>Uber is just a dispatch service I don't think you are taking into account UberPool. HN comments almost never do, perhaps because programmers are generally upper income and do not feel a need to trade money for inconvenience, but UberX is basically a legacy product and now presented as more of an upgrade if you're in a hurry, rather than the default mode. UberPool is everything. A network of cars buzzing around the city dynamically routing from one task (transport passenger, transport package, deliver food, etc) to the next, and each task is cheaper because it can share ride segments with other customers. That is where the winner-take-all argument comes from - the bigger the network, the more efficiently Uber can pack multiple tasks into the same driver-hours, with less delay (more jobs means the car doesn't have to go as far out of its way to share capacity). Uber is more than dispatch - it's quality control, reputation, dispute resolution, capacity planning, payment escrow, (soon to be) routing (it bought a few mapping companies), commercial insurance (try buying that on your own), and increasingly, the efficiency provided by combining multiple tasks in each car. When people call Uber a taxi service - when is the last time a taxi offered you a cheaper ride if you agreed to share the car for 5 blocks with a guy 10 blocks down the road? Disclaimer: I used to work there. Throwaway because I'd rather keep identifying information off my personal account. Opinion is my own, I do not speak for Uber, etc.

hackaflocka 10y ago

> Car manufacturers will begin flirting with building, owning, and deploying their own cars…via their own apps. Music cos. were supposed to do something similar to iTunes etc. Didn't happen. > Cars will appear when ordered through the app. They will drive off and disappear when you step out of the car. When running low on fuel, cars will coordinate trips to tucked away re-charging depots to be smartly refilled with electricity. You mean in about 20 years time? > Then car manufacturers will drastically start reducing the cost of operating these vehicles. With magic?

slaunchwise 10y ago

> Self driving cars are coming fast. It’s largely a solved problem. Come to Boston.

SCAQTony 10y ago

Predictions will always look 100% certain if you presume the cause/problem will never be mitigated. Search up "The horse manure problem: "...In 1894, the Times of London estimated that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. One New York prognosticator of the 1890s concluded that by 1930 the horse droppings would rise to Manhattan’s third-story windows. ..." https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-problem/ https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/03/29/the-horse-manure-...

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digitalpacman 10y ago

Good luck for it to be legal that a drunk person can be in the drivers seat of a car. That's going to take 20-30 years. I'm sorry but there isn't "you can't operate an elevator while drunk" law and people in police elevators pulling you over to the first floor to give you a ticket. Until they remove the ability for drivers to actually drive, they are going to be legally responsible. Uber is fine for the next 30-50 years.

kin 10y ago

Isn't Google invested in Uber? Didn't Uber order 100,000 units of Mercedes vehicles to do something with? Isn't GM partnered with Lyft to accomplish a self-driving taxi service? I don't know, I think Uber and Lyft are well aware of the progress in self-driving vehicle technology and their actions point more towards them behind involved in the process as opposed to being left in the dust. The only group of people that are "fucked" are the current drivers whose jobs will be automated.

dave_sullivan 10y ago
Let's say that's true; the folks at Uber are smart and they'll figure out self driving cars. Why does anyone think Uber will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some self driving cars and opening their own service? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. Uber is in a low-margin business where the only way to really increase profit is to screw your customers or employees or both. If self driving cars are supposed to be the company's savior, good luck being the only organization on the planet that can use them. Having lived through Webvan, Groupon, Zynga, and countless others, I see disturbingly similar patterns in Uber.
- rco8786 10y ago
  You can basically just swap in any company in any industry to your comment...keeping up pace with technological changes, competitors entering your market, and maintaining a profit margin are just normal challenges that every business faces. Let's see: > Let's say that's true; the folks at Google are smart and they'll figure out artificial intelligence. Why does anyone think Google will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying artificial intelligence tools and opening their own AI service? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. > Let's say that's true; the folks at Apple are smart and they'll figure out personal computers. Why does anyone think Apple will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some computer parts and opening their own computer store? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has. > Let's say that's true; the folks at SpaceX are smart and they'll figure out re-usable rockets. Why does anyone think SpaceX will be able to maintain an advantage with that? What's to stop anyone from buying some re-usable rockets and opening their own space travel agency? How does the whole industry not become a race to the bottom? Hell, given the price wars going on now, I'd argue it already has.

vermontdevil 10y ago

Uber does have access to car data - the cars Uber drivers use. I don't know if Uber is using this data to help adapt over the long term. But it's something they do have access right now.

rsp1984 10y ago

By the way, robotics teams have traditionally been steeped in rules-based AI’s. Essentially enormous if-then decision logic tree. Even if they are using the most advanced self-learning algorithms, huge amounts of data are required to train, perfect, and ship such a system. Uber has access to essentially NONE of it. Sorry but there's so much BS condensed in just these two sentences that it immediately disqualifies the whole article. Of course robotics software isn't based on giant decision trees, wtf. Then what's a self-learning algorithm? Who says that Uber couldn't just license self-driving tech or data? And by the way the plural of AI is AIs, without the apostrophe.

dogma1138 10y ago

Self driving cars that are beyond simply assisted driving or and overseen autopilot are probably 10-20 years away. It would take quite a bit of additional improvement in tech and massive legislation for driverless cars to become a common thing. I don't understand why people continue to mix self driving and driverless those are 2 separate things. Autopilot or not I don't see most countries change the law of both hands on the wheel (unless you need to operate another system in the car in which case 1 hand might be taken off it) any time soon. Infact with autopilot becoming more and more popular you might see actually increased enforcement of this law because It's another revenue stream for local authorities. Also if anything Uber is the one that stems to benefit from driverless car since they won't have to pay the drivers any more. With driverless cars I see their business model becoming something like "want to save 30% on your monthly car payments? sign up your car to Uber!", Uber can even offer financing options to people at considerably discounted rates in exchange for a mandatory opt in period. Heck Uber can go Zip car and simply manage their own fleet when driverless cars become a true reality, it might even be easier for companies like Uber to get a driverless car before the general population, they've already built their platform and have a user base, the drivers are this point are a necessary liability for them the minute they can dump them they will. And if the car makers would want to offer a similar service themselves well Uber can just come in as a service provider offer the car manufacturers access to it's user base and platform in exchange for a usage fee it would be even better for them since they could dump a huge chunk of their existing liability onto their partners.

troymc 10y ago
As soon as there's strong evidence (from multiple credible sources) that self-driving tech reduces accidents and fatalities, the government conversation will switch from, "How shall we regulate this?" to "Oh! These are like seat belts. How shall we encourage them?" In other words, governments will speed up adoption, eventually. The owners of the car fleets will be the car manufacturers because they're the ones who can pay the least per car. They don't have to pay any markup! The self-driving tech will come from Google, Tesla, Apple, or the like, not Uber. See the blog post for the reasons why.
- 10y ago

sethish 10y ago

I think the author's spellcheck is fucked. Probably also their chain of reasoning.

cjbprime 10y ago

> Self driving cars are coming fast. Yes, and Uber is working on them. On HN as the same time as this article: http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road/ http://qz.com/688003/ubers-self-driving-cars-are-on-the-road...

whazor 10y ago

Uber has volume and the correct branding, both important parts which a company like Audi will need.

payne92 10y ago

Self-driving cruise control is largely a solved problem, but 100% self-driving is a long time away. Ref: Boston winter, 2015.

niftich 10y ago

1. Self driving cars are not coming fast enough, but their impact on Uber's business model is unclear. They've been investing in self-driving cars [1], but they've also been expanding into parcel delivery, which needs a human to perform the actual contact with the customer [2]. 2. Like the article says, Uber indeed is collecting sensor data in Pittsburgh, to train self-driving algorithms. They may or may not be able to deliver an algorithm rivaling the quality of Google or other players. It's contradictory to say Uber has access to no car data, while pointing out that Uber is collecting car sensor data on their own. The passengers who use Uber may not be very brand-loyal, but that assumes their business model is entirely predicated on customer fares. In truth, their business model is entirely predicated on burning VC money to establish first mover advantage and mindshare, and if they successfully pivot into profitability they will presumably alter business models. Licensing self-driving tech, charging for rush parcel deliveries, providing concierge services -- those are all viable directions in which they can pivot. 3. Being in the business of fleet maintenance is not so fun, and location-aware dispatching, load balancing, etc, requires the sort of secret sauce that, among a few others, Uber has developed. Car manufactures won't engage in this as their core business; they're far more likely to partner with some startup Uber competitor, or Uber itself. But car manufactures aren't like airplanes where the cost of a single unit is so high that it's much more economical to lease indefinitely. Many people in fact own cars -- the very, very profitable used car market is evidence of this, which unlike most new cars, actually has decent margins. While it's true that carmakers have subsidiary banks that offer financing, those instruments enable a larger portion of people to 'buy cars' than otherwise, increasing the total volume of cars delivered. Extremely widespread, mainstream car-hailing on demand would drastically drop the demand for car ownership (in terms of raw numbers) across the board, making it an awful value proposition for car manufactures. [1] https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ [2] https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works

sokoloff 10y ago

> There’s a good reason cars start falling apart after their warranty period — They have been carefully engineered to specifically have this happen, a term called “planned obsolesce”. Manufacturers want to sell more cars, and if cars last longer, they sell way less new cars. My experiences are vastly different. Neither my Mercedes nor my wife's Honda have "fallen apart" after the warranty period. MB is 216K miles and 18 years old and Honda is ~170K miles and 11 years old. Both have averaged under $200 in parts per year, mostly brakes and tires.

niftich 10y ago
Indeed. Obsolescence does occur with cars -- just like most consumer items -- but it's either: - technical or functional obsolescence (eg. no rearview backup camera, carburetors replaced with fuel injection), or - style obsolescence (eg. station wagons, quirky headlamps) because styling is a subjective fashion statement. While this is arguably a sub-type of planned obsolescence, it affects every single object that has visual presence, from clothes to smartphones to household appliances. The kind of 'intentionally crippled engineering designed to fail after the warranty period' the author proposes does not exist, because new cars are perfectly capable of getting themselves sold on their merits, and not because all old cars have been intentionally crippled. In fact, selling secondhand cars is quite often profitable, while selling new cars, outside of the luxury/SUV segment, has notoriously low margins.
elf25 10y ago
Planned obsolesce was discussed by the late Alvin Toffler in his book 'Future Shock' in 1970. A great read! I believe it often occurs in the part manufacturing such as cutting costs. Let's replace this metal gear with a plastic gear and save $x.00 per unit. But every 'person on the street' knows that a metal gear will outlast a cheap plastic gear. Now we've just engineerd in the obsolesce due to bean-counter cost-cutting. But think of Apple (or Dell of you prefer) and the iPhone or iMac. What is the lifespan of the avg. product? 3 yrs? 5 yrs? 10 yrs? 20 yrs? Computational devices are pretty much obsolete in 5 years (ten years for sure if you feel like arguing about 5 yrs.) as new technology is developed and surpasses the old. We now have to design something that works well for that expected time period and keep mfg. costs low.

whack 10y ago

Even if you accept the author's assumption that driverless cars are very close, his argument rests on the following premise: Every single car manufacturer will launch their own uber-like app, market their app directly to the end-user, and maintain a fleet of taxis nationwide, in order to compete with Uber. I find the above premise hard to believe. Why would a company like Nissan take on the massive marketing/logistics challenges required to run a nationwide taxi service? Do we really think the market can support 10+ car manufacturers each running their own Uber-like app? It's so much more likely that each car manufacturer will simply continue trying to sell as much as possible, and let the buyers decide how they want to make use of the car. Even if they do decide to "put their inventory cars to work," they will do so by loaning the cars out to an aggregator like Uber, who will then use these cars in order to run a taxi service. The idea that every car manufacturer will decide to cut Uber out, and enter the taxi business directly, just doesn't sound plausible nor smart.

deegles 10y ago
What I hope will happen is a Red Hat-style company emerging that will maintain an open-source car sharing app/webservice. They would sell support or host each city's car-sharing service for a fee, or just let people set up their own. This way, cities could run the service at cost (or maybe even subsidize it) and drivers would take home more. Or they could use the revenue for the city instead of having it leave the local economy.
warcher 10y ago
Yeah, the car companies are also fucked. Prepare for massive consolidation on that front. One or perhaps two or three car manufacturers will swallow the whole market as demand craters. (We all own our own cars because it's a necessity at this point. It won't stay that way in a driverless future. Nor will cars be the status signifier they currently are.) I actually think the form factor most cars come in will become obsolete-- I think they'll be mostly vans and buses to cope with economies of scale on the rider front and to handle rush hour surges. Who makes the bus you last rode on? Do you know? I know I don't, nor do I care. I mean, Uber is totally fucked if this comes down the pipe and they're not running things, that's undeniable. Their value proposition is running this two sided marketplace that's going to turn into a one sided marketplace. And yeah, putting together a mobile app is a completely different universe than becoming a major auto manufacturer, or a robotics manufacturer of unprecedented scale. (Or in reality, both.)

mrcwinn 10y ago

An analysis of a business today doesn't mean much for the state of a business tomorrow. Companies and situations change. So, for the people happily working for Uber, probably don't quit your job as the author suggests.

larrik 10y ago

Grue3 10y ago

Fusion is also pretty much a solved problem. They even have that one experimental reactor in Europe. The power generation industry is fucked!

eastbayjake 10y ago

It's extreme to say Uber is effed, but it would be reasonable to suggest that Uber is not a ~$60 billion business and that most of its long-term value will be as a dispatch service with an established customer base that gets acquired by a GM/Google self-driving fleet operator for less than its current value.

heisenbit 10y ago

Ueber has strategic challenges as transportation solution provider. The way I see it Ueber - has few barriers to entry in it's business besides brand. - scaling up, maturing is dulling the brand - as a dominant player with a large war chest it may engage in price wars but as a dominant player it will risk regulatory trouble when overdoing it. - established players will adjust e.g. Taxis orgs. with their app or regional/local public transport integration with car sharing - while self driving cars may be a little off the concept of ad-hoc renting a car without a driver is catching on in Germany. Like a taxi one rents a car by the minute and drops the car when arriving. Daimler/Smart, BMW and German public railways are all in. This seems also the proving ground for small electric cars - operating a fleet of your own vehicle is probably providing some insights. Millennial car ownership is dropping vs. earlier generation. So the underlying fundamentals for new transportation solutions are strong. However it is far from clear what role Ueber will have in the medium term.