8 ms·

Truly autonomous vehicles are probably the best and worst thing that will happen to Uber. One of Uber's greatest strength is having all of those drivers, it wou

by brentm 10y ago

Truly autonomous vehicles are probably the best and worst thing that will happen to Uber. One of Uber's greatest strength is having all of those drivers, it would be very hard to create a competing service and recruit that kind of fleet. If tomorrow it was legal to put truly autonomous vehicles on the road what is stopping anyone with a few billion dollars (e.g. Apple, Google, etc) to enter the market and compete on price per ride? I don't think many people are loyal to Uber, they are loyal to whatever is easiest, cheapest and quickest.

sharemywin 10y ago
There's no differentiation. a car ride is a car ride.
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  If that were true then taxis would be fine and Uber wouldn't exist.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Uber isn't competing with taxis. They're competing with anyone who can launch a ride sharing app.
  - taxicabjesus 10y ago
    Taxis were fine in Arizona, but we only had 'Electronic Dispatch v1.0' [1]. The upstarts upgraded the dispatching system to v1.1. The main advantage of their upgraded system (over v1.0) was providing instantaneous feedback of the to the passenger's mobile computer. v1.1 also gave the passenger the ability to 'rate' their driver, which was also not a feature of v1.0. [1] http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.0/ http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.0/
  - sharemywin 10y ago
    uber beats them on price. that's not product differentiation.
Retric 10y ago
Autonomous cars don't solve the 'someone puked in the back' problem. So, companies will need a fair amount of local infrastructure near every city. Drivers are probably easier to find. So, I suspect 1-2 years after Ubner runs out of money is going to be the time for a competitor to show up. Their real risk is a company treating ride hailing as a million dollar company vs. a billion dollar company and running with ultra thin margins.
- dx034 10y ago
  You only need a parking lot with cleaning staff. As soon as it was detected that the car needs to be cleaned it will automatically drive there. Should be much cheaper than paying drivers full time. And in most cities finding employees shouldn't be that hard.
  - taxicabjesus 10y ago
    It takes at least a 1/2 hour to get back to base. Your cleaning staff can't be waiting around all day doing nothing, they need things to do. So the dirty car sits idle until the staff gets to it. Then it takes another 1/2 hour to get back to where the hoity-toity crowd likes to party. If someone pukes in the car, it's out of service for the rest of the day.
    - jonwachob91 10y ago
      Or, I could just drive the cleaning person to the vehicle in question. I'd still have those 30 minutes of downtime + cleaning time, but no time returning the car to action. So maybe I lose an hour a day per cleaning (and maybe the car should be cleaned once a day regardless, nice way to keep the cleaning team engaged) BUT a self-driving car isn't a person. It can work 24 hours a day, so I'd still get 23 hours out of it.
      - Retric 10y ago
        That reduces the throughput of the cleaning staff and costs you 1+ cars moving them around anyway. Also, from a capital perspective the utilization from 2-5 AM is going to be terrible. Taking peak demand into consideration you probably average ~6-15 hours per day per car anyway.
PretzelFisch 10y ago
You are assuming Uber would want to own the cars. Probably they would want to let the car owner put it to work, while it would otherwise be sitting in the garage or parking lot.
- probe 10y ago
  Totally agree - the Otto purchase suggests that they're looking to retrofit existing cars. I'm guessing this means you still need that driver network to at least provide the vehicles (and potentially manpower in the short run to ensure safety).
- LordHumungous 10y ago
  So let me get this straight. I'm a private citizen early adopter who buys a fancy new expensive self driving car. I'm super fond of it because it's a hot new technology. Then I lend it out to Uber to have the shit beat out of it with city driving, drunk people puking in the back of it, etc. And I'm supposed to cover the costs of maintenance and cleaning. Uber better be offering me a fuck load of money, otherwise that sounds like a pretty bad deal.

by brentm 10y ago

sharemywin 10y ago

There's no differentiation. a car ride is a car ride.

madeofpalk 10y ago
If that were true then taxis would be fine and Uber wouldn't exist.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Uber isn't competing with taxis. They're competing with anyone who can launch a ride sharing app.
- taxicabjesus 10y ago
  Taxis were fine in Arizona, but we only had 'Electronic Dispatch v1.0' [1]. The upstarts upgraded the dispatching system to v1.1. The main advantage of their upgraded system (over v1.0) was providing instantaneous feedback of the to the passenger's mobile computer. v1.1 also gave the passenger the ability to 'rate' their driver, which was also not a feature of v1.0. [1] http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.0/ http://www.taxiwars.org/electronic-taxi-dispatch-v1.0/
- sharemywin 10y ago
  uber beats them on price. that's not product differentiation.

Retric 10y ago

Autonomous cars don't solve the 'someone puked in the back' problem. So, companies will need a fair amount of local infrastructure near every city. Drivers are probably easier to find. So, I suspect 1-2 years after Ubner runs out of money is going to be the time for a competitor to show up. Their real risk is a company treating ride hailing as a million dollar company vs. a billion dollar company and running with ultra thin margins.

dx034 10y ago
You only need a parking lot with cleaning staff. As soon as it was detected that the car needs to be cleaned it will automatically drive there. Should be much cheaper than paying drivers full time. And in most cities finding employees shouldn't be that hard.
- taxicabjesus 10y ago
  It takes at least a 1/2 hour to get back to base. Your cleaning staff can't be waiting around all day doing nothing, they need things to do. So the dirty car sits idle until the staff gets to it. Then it takes another 1/2 hour to get back to where the hoity-toity crowd likes to party. If someone pukes in the car, it's out of service for the rest of the day.
  - jonwachob91 10y ago
    Or, I could just drive the cleaning person to the vehicle in question. I'd still have those 30 minutes of downtime + cleaning time, but no time returning the car to action. So maybe I lose an hour a day per cleaning (and maybe the car should be cleaned once a day regardless, nice way to keep the cleaning team engaged) BUT a self-driving car isn't a person. It can work 24 hours a day, so I'd still get 23 hours out of it.
    - Retric 10y ago
      That reduces the throughput of the cleaning staff and costs you 1+ cars moving them around anyway. Also, from a capital perspective the utilization from 2-5 AM is going to be terrible. Taking peak demand into consideration you probably average ~6-15 hours per day per car anyway.

PretzelFisch 10y ago

You are assuming Uber would want to own the cars. Probably they would want to let the car owner put it to work, while it would otherwise be sitting in the garage or parking lot.

probe 10y ago
Totally agree - the Otto purchase suggests that they're looking to retrofit existing cars. I'm guessing this means you still need that driver network to at least provide the vehicles (and potentially manpower in the short run to ensure safety).
LordHumungous 10y ago
So let me get this straight. I'm a private citizen early adopter who buys a fancy new expensive self driving car. I'm super fond of it because it's a hot new technology. Then I lend it out to Uber to have the shit beat out of it with city driving, drunk people puking in the back of it, etc. And I'm supposed to cover the costs of maintenance and cleaning. Uber better be offering me a fuck load of money, otherwise that sounds like a pretty bad deal.