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Agreed for their current model. However Uber is very different to Visa. What's the endgame for Uber? Surely that's operating an autonomous fleet. No drivers. V

by drsim 9y ago

Agreed for their current model. However Uber is very different to Visa. What's the endgame for Uber? Surely that's operating an autonomous fleet. No drivers. Visa will always have merchants, but Uber will not always have drivers.

saas_co_de 9y ago
Yes, this reporting would make sense for the imaginary company that operates with technology that does not currently exist, but that is not the way that companies typically make financial statements. (also why Uber is not public)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
batmansmk 9y ago
None of the current business supports this endgame. Recruiting drivers, trying to match demand and offer, offering insurances, loans to drivers to get vehicles, negotiating with authorities to not have to pass taxi certification for drivers... All those cost points don't benefit the endgame.
- jey 9y ago
  The theory is that the customer install base, brand, and mindshare are the valuable assets that will give them a head start in the autonomous sector.
cmurf 9y ago
I think all the autonomous fleet stuff done by Uber is pure hype to get more investors thinking that is the endgame, and that it's not just viable in the next 5-10 years, but inevitability. There is no reason why municipalities should not consider their own autonomous fleets as part of public transit. The roads are already public, having a fully autonomous fleet is hardly any different than public buses or trains purchased from private manufacturers. It'll be a commodity (or at least it should be, short of monopolization and cronyism).
- melvinmt 9y ago
  Exactly. We had a similar discussion a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16006674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16006674.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  > There is no reason why municipalities should not consider their own autonomous fleets as part of public transit. Except that they're terrible inefficient, and still 10~15 years away. Even if the tech was available tomorrow, and even if you could cut off Interstates so they only allowed autonomous vehicles and all those vehicles could run at 120kph, bumper-to-bumper at less than .5 meter intervals, a six lane highway would even begin to approach the capacity of a single track of London train line running at <2min intervals (which they often do during the morning rush .. often times < 30sec intervals). http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... Self-driving cars are new and shiny and all the rage, but they're nowhere near ready for production deployment en-mass, people still don't realize that no person can actually own a autonomous car (the inspection/maintenance cycle would need to be more strict than a small engine aircraft) and therefore they wouldn't be able to be modified in any way. For a fraction of the cost, American cities could revitalize and expand our crumbling rail infrastructure, which would be way more helpful than autonomous public car fleets.
  - cmurf 9y ago
    I did say "part of" public transit. Clearly trains have a role in moving people from point A to F to M, and the in-between can be done with autonomous. And I don't have a 5-10 year pie in the sky idea of autonomous either, I'm thinking 25 years down the road. The point is car ownership itself is obsolete and it's not a big stretch for there to be a public car option. The road infra is already public, just like rail tracks and rail cars.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    Maintenance is likely to be cheaper per mile for an autonomous car than a human driven one, though a combination of actually being on a regular cycle, dedicated fleet facilities, and better driving practices. As far as autonomous vs traditional public transit, it's a false dichotomy. Municipalities will use both when it comes to moving people around, because they're good for different use cases. You choose one particular metric where trains do win out, but that's an irrelevancy, because it's not even close to feasible to build a system of trains that do everything that cars currently are able to do.
bunderbunder 9y ago
I have a hard time seeing that as an endgame that Uber is well-positioned to win at. Right now, Uber's core competencies are having a nice app, and managing a bunch of people-centric things like recruiting drivers and getting them to be available to drive at times when people want rides. Of those two, the latter is probably the more difficult one to clone. It's also useless to a company that doesn't employ any drivers. What they have close to zero competency in is fleet management. That's something for which traditional cab companies have something approaching a 100 year head start, and they which are very good at. I think that's the reason why Uber has decided that it's so critical that they develop their own self-driving car technology: They need to control a supply of self-driving cars during the critical transition period if they want to avoid being at a disadvantage while it's happening. If everyone's buying commodity self-driving cars from a big automaker, then it's just a game of who can operate most efficiently in order to offer the lowest prices. Traditional cab companies were already good at that, and, if anything, the influence of Uber on their market over the past however many years has forced them to get even better at it.
- SilasX 9y ago
  How would Uber be any better at fleet management (than cab companies) when the fleet is self driving? Do cab companies’ fleet management practices fall apart when they don't need drivers?
- andrewjl 9y ago
  Whether or not the company has drivers, the data on who rides where and how much it costs to meet that demand via local driving pool is valuable. And Uber has by far the biggest data set on the planet. (They are active in more cities than Lyft.)
AJ007 9y ago
I would like to see some financial comparisons of operating an autonomous owned fleet vs current third party drivers. If Uber’s big moat is on the driver supply side, an autonomous fleet could wipe that away and hand the profits to Google & Apple in an auction based market for rides.

by drsim 9y ago

saas_co_de 9y ago

Yes, this reporting would make sense for the imaginary company that operates with technology that does not currently exist, but that is not the way that companies typically make financial statements. (also why Uber is not public)

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

batmansmk 9y ago

None of the current business supports this endgame. Recruiting drivers, trying to match demand and offer, offering insurances, loans to drivers to get vehicles, negotiating with authorities to not have to pass taxi certification for drivers... All those cost points don't benefit the endgame.

jey 9y ago
The theory is that the customer install base, brand, and mindshare are the valuable assets that will give them a head start in the autonomous sector.

cmurf 9y ago

I think all the autonomous fleet stuff done by Uber is pure hype to get more investors thinking that is the endgame, and that it's not just viable in the next 5-10 years, but inevitability. There is no reason why municipalities should not consider their own autonomous fleets as part of public transit. The roads are already public, having a fully autonomous fleet is hardly any different than public buses or trains purchased from private manufacturers. It'll be a commodity (or at least it should be, short of monopolization and cronyism).

melvinmt 9y ago
Exactly. We had a similar discussion a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16006674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16006674.
djsumdog 9y ago
> There is no reason why municipalities should not consider their own autonomous fleets as part of public transit. Except that they're terrible inefficient, and still 10~15 years away. Even if the tech was available tomorrow, and even if you could cut off Interstates so they only allowed autonomous vehicles and all those vehicles could run at 120kph, bumper-to-bumper at less than .5 meter intervals, a six lane highway would even begin to approach the capacity of a single track of London train line running at <2min intervals (which they often do during the morning rush .. often times < 30sec intervals). http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol... Self-driving cars are new and shiny and all the rage, but they're nowhere near ready for production deployment en-mass, people still don't realize that no person can actually own a autonomous car (the inspection/maintenance cycle would need to be more strict than a small engine aircraft) and therefore they wouldn't be able to be modified in any way. For a fraction of the cost, American cities could revitalize and expand our crumbling rail infrastructure, which would be way more helpful than autonomous public car fleets.
- cmurf 9y ago
  I did say "part of" public transit. Clearly trains have a role in moving people from point A to F to M, and the in-between can be done with autonomous. And I don't have a 5-10 year pie in the sky idea of autonomous either, I'm thinking 25 years down the road. The point is car ownership itself is obsolete and it's not a big stretch for there to be a public car option. The road infra is already public, just like rail tracks and rail cars.
- scarmig 9y ago
  Maintenance is likely to be cheaper per mile for an autonomous car than a human driven one, though a combination of actually being on a regular cycle, dedicated fleet facilities, and better driving practices. As far as autonomous vs traditional public transit, it's a false dichotomy. Municipalities will use both when it comes to moving people around, because they're good for different use cases. You choose one particular metric where trains do win out, but that's an irrelevancy, because it's not even close to feasible to build a system of trains that do everything that cars currently are able to do.

bunderbunder 9y ago

I have a hard time seeing that as an endgame that Uber is well-positioned to win at. Right now, Uber's core competencies are having a nice app, and managing a bunch of people-centric things like recruiting drivers and getting them to be available to drive at times when people want rides. Of those two, the latter is probably the more difficult one to clone. It's also useless to a company that doesn't employ any drivers. What they have close to zero competency in is fleet management. That's something for which traditional cab companies have something approaching a 100 year head start, and they which are very good at. I think that's the reason why Uber has decided that it's so critical that they develop their own self-driving car technology: They need to control a supply of self-driving cars during the critical transition period if they want to avoid being at a disadvantage while it's happening. If everyone's buying commodity self-driving cars from a big automaker, then it's just a game of who can operate most efficiently in order to offer the lowest prices. Traditional cab companies were already good at that, and, if anything, the influence of Uber on their market over the past however many years has forced them to get even better at it.

SilasX 9y ago
How would Uber be any better at fleet management (than cab companies) when the fleet is self driving? Do cab companies’ fleet management practices fall apart when they don't need drivers?
andrewjl 9y ago
Whether or not the company has drivers, the data on who rides where and how much it costs to meet that demand via local driving pool is valuable. And Uber has by far the biggest data set on the planet. (They are active in more cities than Lyft.)

AJ007 9y ago

I would like to see some financial comparisons of operating an autonomous owned fleet vs current third party drivers. If Uber’s big moat is on the driver supply side, an autonomous fleet could wipe that away and hand the profits to Google & Apple in an auction based market for rides.