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Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to
by stormbrew 10y ago
Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to the US and a handful of large Asian cities.
I think people severely underestimate Uber's worldwide push in preparing themselves to be a force to be reckoned with when the autonomous vehicle takes off.
- rorykoehler 10y agoIt won't be worth anything because autonomous ride-sharing will be a pricing game. Anyone who undercuts Uber, and there will be plenty of willing and able companies, will beat them.
- _spoonman 10y agoAn app that books the cheapest ride for you out of all the ride-sharing companies. Like Kayak but for ride-sharing. This comment is the same as a patent, right?
- dragonwriter 10y agoGoogle has ridesharing price comparison built into Maps already.
- web007 10y agoArbitrage for cars - Carbitrage. Someone already had the domain registered the last time I checked.
- rorykoehler 10y agohttps://www.urbi.co/en/ https://www.urbi.co/en/ same same but for car sharing services. Ediy: seems to also include ride sharing now.
- aetherson 10y agoUber attempts to keep control of what clients connect to its API for exactly this reason.
- choxi 10y agoThere are a few other things they could compete on: - Availability. Who has the largest network and highest availability? - Car Design. Who has the most comfortable or fully featured cars? - Safety. Who has the safest car? Who has the safest track record? It might eventually become a race to the bottom, but I think there's still plenty of opportunity to compete on other fronts for at least the next five years.
- baldeagle 10y agoAbility to clean / autonomously clean itself. I think this will be the next big thing for car ride fleets.
- maxerickson 10y agoIf you are competing on price for commuters the obvious thing is a waterproof interior and some high pressure nozzles in the ceiling. Car drives up to machine with hose, hose attaches, water sprays.
- dpark 10y agoThe obvious thing is to pay a couple of people minimum wage to sit in a parking lot and clean cars when they arrive. A car with a waterproof interior would be miserable and cheap feeling. No one wants to sit in a humid, rubber car.
- dpark 10y agoHaving a few people waiting in a parking lot to clean cars is a far more cost-effective strategy. There's no need for complex automation on this.
- ralphhughes 10y agoWe tried this with our fleet of landrovers. Each one has a waterproof interior and is plumbed with sprinkler pipe with hoze-lock connectors on the back of the vehicle so it can be plugged in to the water supply. It doesn't work, the water spray is not strong enough, or directed enough to remove the mud and sand. We still have to have people going round with water jets to spot clean. A have my doubts a fully automatic system could ever work effectively.
- rubicon33 10y agoHere's a crazy business idea: You know how a person nowadays can register for uber and drive people around? In the future, maybe people will register their CAR (which can drive itself). So they sit at home, getting work done, while their car is off autonomously driving itself and picking people up. When you want it to come home, just call it home.
- rorykoehler 10y agoWhich is exactly what Musk announced Tesla will be doing.
- rubicon33 10y agoHadn't heard that! This is why I'm not an entrepreneur apparently... Every time I have an idea, it's been done already by at least one person. Anyways, you wouldn't happen to have that announcement handy would you?
- overcast 10y agoGood ideas are a dime a dozen. Whatever you're thinking, a thousand other people on the planet have DEFINITELY thought of as well. The difference between people with ideas, and entrepreneurs, is that entrepreneurs make an attempt to bring that idea to life.
- cvigoe 10y agohttps://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
- bduerst 10y agoThat just proves pricing is even more relevant. Anyone could spin up an app that let's people lease out their self-driving cars. The existing ride-sharing consumers are not loyal to the apps.
- duality 10y agoLiterally pimping your ride
- jamesfe 10y agoUber is everywhere except China - http://fortune.com/2016/08/07/uber-china-didi-chuxing/ http://fortune.com/2016/08/07/uber-china-didi-chuxing/
- bhups 10y agoFacebook and Google are also everywhere except China.
- bduerst 10y agoI'm not aware Facebook and Google are burning $1B to be in China though.
- bhups 10y agoNot only is Uber no longer burning $1B to be in China, they now own a 20% stake in what is now a monopoly in China to (ostensibly) make all of it back and then some.
- pertymcpert 10y agoThey sold their business to Didi Chuxing, they're no longer taking that loss.
- celticninja 10y agoUser is ubiquitous only because of its ability to burn an astonishing amount of money. Their bet is that they am do this long enough to make themselves the market leader. I am not convinced that they can continue to lose money at the rate they currently are for the future potential as a monopoly provider. At some point investors are going to ask for a return or bail on the company.
- DamnYuppie 10y agoI don't disagree with you but people said the same thing about amazon for over a decade....
- FT_intern 10y agowhat economies of scale does ride sharing have?
- linkregister 10y agoThe same economy of scale that keeps people using Facebook despite constant privacy issues and bad press: the network effect. That said, Facebook has a much larger network effect than Uber. The friction to create a profile and attend an driver orientation on a competing ride broker network is much smaller than telling your everyone on your Facebook friends list you're moving to Diaspora.
- user837387 10y agoAmazon can collapse really fast. My bet is that if it does it will be almost overnight and everybody will claim that nobody saw it coming. The reason I believe that it may collapse is because now when I want to buy something online I rather go to Walmart,Target or to the specific brand store. When I think of Amazon the picture that comes to mind is of shady people trying to scam me out of my money. My perception, even if erroneous, right now is that Walmart is less shady than Amazon when it comes to buying merchandize. If enough people start to feel this way about Amazon there may come a tipping point and the entire company will collapse. Once the tipping point happens I don't think it will be possible for Bezos to reverse it, though he will spend mountains of cash trying to.
- tedajax 10y agoYou know it's funny though because I stopped using Uber with the most recent update that completely screwed up the UX. There's a billion variables that will go into which companies succeed and fail.
- cortesoft 10y agoWhat was the change that did it for you? I didn't notice that much different, at least in how i use it.
- tedajax 10y agoIt became very difficult to override the position of the pin after the GPS decided it just had to know where I was instead of me. Also the tracking you for 5 minutes after a ride is completely unforgivable.
- hsod 10y agoThey changed the UX, you now drag the pin after setting your general location and choosing your destination. I think this is because they want to suggest more efficient pickup locations instead of just wherever you happen to be standing. Felt a little weird at first but I'm already used to it.
- jackgolding 10y agoWhich is fair enough, but nearly every driver I've spoken with hates the pin and a reasonable percentage get lost unless you put a landmark in as the address.
- hsod 10y agoWeird, I've literally never used a landmark and drop pins 100% of the time. I've been taking 2-6 Uber rides a week for about three years. I've never had a problem.
- 10y ago
- ForHackernews 10y agoI don't think it matters. The economics of Uber are pretty grim: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver... Furthermore, if there are a bunch of self-driving car services, that service will be commoditized the same way cabs are. These ride-giving services will [and kind of already do] only compete on price.
- bduerst 10y agoThe key is in the hardware. Yes, Uber may have a global precense, but that's from burning VC cash and they're not exactly successful in major markets like China. And for what? Uber is essentially a messaging app between users and drivers, and their users/drivers are not loyal. Uber as a self-driving company would need to sell hardware to drivers to convert their vehicles into self-driving cars, and I don't think they'll have the bank to get that far, especially against larger companies with deeper pockets and existing hardware experience/partnerships.
- theDoug 10y agoUber's ride sharing model is fine for the major markets around the world (that have accepted it), but I think they're going to have to stretch quite a bit to successfully operate elsewhere. Uber's autonomous trucking model is likely to aid in the complete change of that industry, though.
- duaneb 10y agoThey're already a force to be reckoned with. How do you compete against a company that might as well burn cash in the streets? The rich are buying the future on the backs of the working class. When uber goes under, the jobs won't come back, but transit can't be that cheap. It's not like the cost of a ride was actually based on the cost of the car OR the labor.
- nerfhammer 10y agoWhy wouldn't Toyota just launch Toyotas On Demand? If the cost of the car and fuel are the only significant costs, Toyota could probably do it more cheaply than Uber. Uber's network effect is its driver network. It will find it a lot harder to compete if you no longer need drivers, when it has to compete with real car companies that could be able to undercut them on cost.
- kbenson 10y ago> Toyota could probably do it more cheaply than Uber. I agree. The fact that autonomous cars will likely reduce ownership will put a squeeze on car companies, and it might make sense for them to branch into service areas, as they can get the cars at cost. I guarantee that for 10,000 Camrys purchased by Uber and 10,000 Camrys built and shuffled to a ride service division by Toyota, Toyota's ride-sharing division will get the sweeter deal on price. Put another way, it's much easier for Toyota to start a ride service company than it is for Uber to start manufacturing cars to get them at cost.
- linkregister 10y agoI think that is suboptimal vertical integration. Hertz is a fleet buyer for a good reason; it doesn't want to be reliant on its Hertz Automotive subsidiary to meet a production quota. It doesn't want that capital expenditure. It wants to buy cars at volume and sell them as they depreciate.
- readams 10y agoHertz lives in an equilibrium where lots of people buy and operator their own cars. Autonomous cars may well move us to an equilibrium where most people do not own cars and instead rely on services. That totally changes the economics of the situation.
- linkregister 10y agoHow does it change the economics of the situation? More volume or shorter rentals? Would having more frequent rentals mean that rental companies would want to produce their own cars?