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Give it time. Soon they will have a foothold (aka presence) all over the planet. By the time they do this the auto industry will be able to produce a reliable s

Give it time. Soon they will have a foothold (aka presence) all over the planet. By the time they do this the auto industry will be able to produce a reliable self-driving car and regulations will be catching up. Then someone who owns a self-driving (preferably electric) car will be "renting" his/her car to Uber for the hours when he/she does not need it. The uber will THRIVE using someone else's vehicle, kicking the responsibility for maintenance etc to THEM and Uber will be collecting a nice 5-10-20% cut JUST for the service provision (booking, ACH, etc).

BillinghamJ 10y ago
I actually don't expect they'd be successful using arbitrary people's cars. These marketplace companies don't tend to do very well when the supply side of the market isn't properly prepared for the nature of operating in the marketplace - i.e. most Uber drivers are exclusively Uber drivers - it isn't really car sharing any more. The time and effort would shift away from dealing with drivers who know where they stand, to providing constant support to upset car owners. Quickly, it would switch to the supply primarily being provided by large businesses who own 1k+ cars because the economics stack up well in large quantities. At that point, Uber might as well just buy the cars directly and cut out the middleman.
bunderbunder 10y ago
I don't think they will thrive in that scenario. Uber's got a few advantages, but I think they mostly boil down to being the first ones to have an app, and having a whole bunch of VC cash to pour into a business that hasn't proven to be any more profitable for them in the past few years than it has been for everyone else over the past couple centuries. They've got one big disadvantage, which is that the fleet maintenance costs for their service model are extraordinarily high. There are no in-house mechanics, and there's no fleet standardization. They've been able to get by without that through a combination of that VC money, and being able to shift the fleet maintenance costs onto the ledgers of their drivers, who presumably aren't generally factoring those costs in when forming a business plan. I don't know when self-driving cars will be fully autonomous. But it seems a pretty safe bet that, by the time they do, their advantages in the app and the VC cash department will have eroded away. By that point we're back to the same old commoditized, race-to-the-bottom industry that, minor departures aside, has characterized taxi service since the horse and buggy days. At which point there's no room for individual owners anymore. In that kind of industry environment, the people who have standardized fleets and in-house mechanics will always be able to outcompete the people who need to pay Volvo dealer prices for vehicle maintenance. I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. But it seems a safe bet that's going to be a long way along the technology's maturity arc. I, personally, wouldn't be willing to lay down cash to bet whether the long term looks like a bunch of individuals renting out cars they own anyway, or people mostly not owning cars because it's not worth the trouble to own one anymore. For my part, though, I'm more keenly interested in the latter - right now, for me, the main value proposition behind owning a car is that it's kind of a hassle to haul myself to a car rental shop when I want one for a weekend trip. That hassle disappears when they can just send the car to me instead. tl;dr - Uber's "sharing economy" model, attractive as it sounds, never really made a whole lot of economic sense in the long view. Their more likely futures are to either become one of the traditional taxi companies, or be squashed by them.
- ghaff 10y ago
  >I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. So many "car sharing" discussions seem to be predicated on the idea that auto costs/depreciation are time-based. In fact, they're probably a lot more mileage-based, especially in areas that don't get snow. So that extra 25K miles that get put on a "shared" car are not remotely free just because you already own the car anyway.
maxerickson 10y ago
In that scenario the one thing they bring to the equation is a famous brand. That doesn't give much of an edge when it is easy to try a different service.
darpa_escapee 10y ago
This guy drank the 2014 sharing economy Kool Aid. The end-result of these services is that we'll be renting from Uber/whatever, not the other way around.
bamboozled 10y ago
Wouldn't self-driving cars available to all mean they're out of luck and lost the the advantage they were hoping to exclusively obtain? It would be easy for locally owned competitors / taxi companies to be competitive with the added bonus of tayloring the service to suit the clients. Why would you assume Uber would have exclusive rights to use people's vehicles, IMO it will just start price wars to the bottom right ? Why would stop others from building booking software and leasing it ? How do you ensure the third party vehicles are clean and up to standard etc? Sorry, but I don't see it.
bamboozled 10y ago
Wouldn't self-driving cars available to all mean they're out of luck and lost the the advantage they were hoping to exclusively obtain? It would be easy for locally owned competitors / taxi companies to be competitive with the added bonus of tayloring the service to suit the clients. Why would you assume Uber would have exclusive rights to use people's vehicles, IMO it will just start price wars to the bottom right ? Why would stop others from building booking software and leasing it ?

BillinghamJ 10y ago

I actually don't expect they'd be successful using arbitrary people's cars. These marketplace companies don't tend to do very well when the supply side of the market isn't properly prepared for the nature of operating in the marketplace - i.e. most Uber drivers are exclusively Uber drivers - it isn't really car sharing any more. The time and effort would shift away from dealing with drivers who know where they stand, to providing constant support to upset car owners. Quickly, it would switch to the supply primarily being provided by large businesses who own 1k+ cars because the economics stack up well in large quantities. At that point, Uber might as well just buy the cars directly and cut out the middleman.

bunderbunder 10y ago

I don't think they will thrive in that scenario. Uber's got a few advantages, but I think they mostly boil down to being the first ones to have an app, and having a whole bunch of VC cash to pour into a business that hasn't proven to be any more profitable for them in the past few years than it has been for everyone else over the past couple centuries. They've got one big disadvantage, which is that the fleet maintenance costs for their service model are extraordinarily high. There are no in-house mechanics, and there's no fleet standardization. They've been able to get by without that through a combination of that VC money, and being able to shift the fleet maintenance costs onto the ledgers of their drivers, who presumably aren't generally factoring those costs in when forming a business plan. I don't know when self-driving cars will be fully autonomous. But it seems a pretty safe bet that, by the time they do, their advantages in the app and the VC cash department will have eroded away. By that point we're back to the same old commoditized, race-to-the-bottom industry that, minor departures aside, has characterized taxi service since the horse and buggy days. At which point there's no room for individual owners anymore. In that kind of industry environment, the people who have standardized fleets and in-house mechanics will always be able to outcompete the people who need to pay Volvo dealer prices for vehicle maintenance. I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. But it seems a safe bet that's going to be a long way along the technology's maturity arc. I, personally, wouldn't be willing to lay down cash to bet whether the long term looks like a bunch of individuals renting out cars they own anyway, or people mostly not owning cars because it's not worth the trouble to own one anymore. For my part, though, I'm more keenly interested in the latter - right now, for me, the main value proposition behind owning a car is that it's kind of a hassle to haul myself to a car rental shop when I want one for a weekend trip. That hassle disappears when they can just send the car to me instead. tl;dr - Uber's "sharing economy" model, attractive as it sounds, never really made a whole lot of economic sense in the long view. Their more likely futures are to either become one of the traditional taxi companies, or be squashed by them.

ghaff 10y ago
>I also don't know when self-driving cars will be cheap enough that typical individual owners will have either the need or the inclination to massively jump their depreciation rate, or to subject them to wear and tear by random strangers. So many "car sharing" discussions seem to be predicated on the idea that auto costs/depreciation are time-based. In fact, they're probably a lot more mileage-based, especially in areas that don't get snow. So that extra 25K miles that get put on a "shared" car are not remotely free just because you already own the car anyway.

maxerickson 10y ago

In that scenario the one thing they bring to the equation is a famous brand. That doesn't give much of an edge when it is easy to try a different service.

darpa_escapee 10y ago

This guy drank the 2014 sharing economy Kool Aid. The end-result of these services is that we'll be renting from Uber/whatever, not the other way around.

bamboozled 10y ago

Wouldn't self-driving cars available to all mean they're out of luck and lost the the advantage they were hoping to exclusively obtain? It would be easy for locally owned competitors / taxi companies to be competitive with the added bonus of tayloring the service to suit the clients. Why would you assume Uber would have exclusive rights to use people's vehicles, IMO it will just start price wars to the bottom right ? Why would stop others from building booking software and leasing it ? How do you ensure the third party vehicles are clean and up to standard etc? Sorry, but I don't see it.

bamboozled 10y ago