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There are two competing narratives about ride-hailing apps success: 1) They are profitable because they are finding loopholes in relevant legislation, or, 2)
by brownbat 10y ago
There are two competing narratives about ride-hailing apps success:
1) They are profitable because they are finding loopholes in relevant legislation, or,
2) they are profitable because they are injecting competition and new ideas into a stagnating industry dominated by government-protected monopolies (or oligopolies).
Your opinion of the law will likely depend on which narrative you find more persuasive.
- darawk 10y agoThey are pretty clearly profitable for both of those reasons. They are not at all mutually exclusive.
- paulcole 10y agoAre they profitable though?
- hueving 10y agoIn the US, yes. They were using that to fund expansion into China/India.
- maverick_iceman 10y agoUber is, I don't know about Lyft. Does anyone here knows about Lyft's profitability?
- tim333 10y agoLyft is losing a fortune. >According to Bloomberg, the ridesharing startup took a net loss of $127 million in the first half of [2015], off less than $47 million in revenue.
- manarth 10y ago$0.19 a ride in the USA (not including “interest, taxes, and equity-based compensation for employees").[1] Although it's possible that after interest, taxes etc, that they're not even profitable in the US yet. [1] https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-says-profitable-us-much-151211910.html https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uber-says-profitable-us-mu...
- PieterH 10y ago3) they're profitable because they fit demand to supply better, with less administrative overhead.
- cpkpad 10y agoThis is much more the case. The digital reputation system works better than all the taxi background checks. The routing works better. And it eliminates insane rules which effectively make taxis drive half the time without passengers (e.g. restricted pickup zones -- if a taxi takes me to the airport, they can't bring someone else back).
- bsder 10y ago> They are profitable We have no evidence of this, and this is scary to me, for various reasons. Uber/Lyft/et al are all about trying to gain a "lock" on the industry. If they succeed, they're going to hose me, badly. If they fail, they're going to leave a big crater behind from all the taxis they drove out of business. Not friendly.
- bmon 10y agoWhat makes you think that cab companies aren't ripping you off already? In my area, you pay over twice the amount for a cab compared to uber.
- angry-hacker 10y agoAnd what do you think happens when they have the monopoly and/or VC's start wanting their money back?
- zigzigzag 10y agoEr, either prices float to their natural level and there's no problem (i.e. Uber's profits are reasonable), or a competitor comes along. Come on, keep some perspective. Uber is a taxi app. We're not talking about a Manhatten Project of software here. Duplicating the Uber experience is easy. 99% of the effort they're putting in there is the fights with all the governments, regulators, taxi unions etc.
- angry-hacker 10y agoAnd how those new apps get traction? They either need VC money or they die. Facebook and Twitter are not Manhattan projects either, but there's no real competition. Right now Uber is using the VC money to break or ignore laws and create itself a monopoly. If we really wanted to disrupt the Taxi business, you need to destroy all the regulation for everyone. Collecting tax pennies and giving them away does not help, of course. It does not matter what the right answer is; the playground needs to be equal.