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Uber has done the hard work of normalizing ride sharing everywhere and giving consumer pricing expectations of rides, just for Google to sweep in with it fixed-

Uber has done the hard work of normalizing ride sharing everywhere and giving consumer pricing expectations of rides, just for Google to sweep in with it fixed-cost self driving car ride sharing service to start collecting massive profits. It is going to take a while to spread nationwide but Google will do it eventually, really just a matter of time (not even money for a company as rich as Google). I'm really wondering where Uber goes from here.

mcbutterbunz 8y ago
Doesn't Uber have their own driverless car division? Toyota recently invested $500 million in it as well. I think where Uber goes from here is to compete in the space they're very familiar with.
- tigershark 8y ago
  Yes, and it is so good that they are the only self driving company to actually kill someone.
dilyevsky 8y ago
How is undercutting the driver (that already don’t get paid shit) going to reap massive profits? Also think about what it takes for uber to start in new city (literally a guy with a phone in a motel) vs self driving company =)
- function_seven 8y ago
  The driver gets about half to 3/4 of the fare. So on a hypothetical $10 trip, Uber is getting between $2.50 and $5.00 of that. Google can price a similar trip at $7, saving the rider $3 and boosting the revenue by $2 to $4.50.
  - dilyevsky 8y ago
    Yeah but they are now on the hook for car maintenance, charging (or gas), parking etc etc
    - l4yao 8y ago
      I imagine those details work out to be cheaper per vehicle for a company with a large fleet of nearly identical vehicles and a dedicated operations team.
  - wnissen 8y ago
    The driver grosses that much, but has to cover gas and the cost of the car itself out of their share. The actual amount the driver keeps appears to be on the order of $10 an hour, so I doubt we'll see very cheap rides any time soon.
- asdff 8y ago
  I've never understood why the model isn't for self driving public buses. This should be the primary focus. More riders in one vehicle lowers costs for running the service itself as well as greatly cheapening wide area coverage abilities. We all love the on-demand, single rider model that Lyft pioneered, but it also isn't sustainable with traffic demands increasing every year with population. Machine learning and productive partnerships with city traffic officials will ensure buses are routed on sensible routes that could be changed with demand without inconveniencing riders. Strictly protected bus lanes would also simplify the programming needed to maneuver a self driving vehicle through traffic.
  - hindsightRegret 8y ago
    Removing one driver from a bus which can carry 30-60 people is less cost cutting than removing one driver for 1-4 passengers for a private/pooled ride. Companies don't attack problems from a societal benefit-analysis standpoint, they attack them from a profit standpoint.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Corporate car services have existed for decades before Uber. Googe and partners popularized smartphones and mobile mapping, and developed mobile payments. Uber added nothing of relevance here except creating labor+capital intensive low paying jobs.
- ghaff 8y ago
  I'm no particular fan of Uber but I don't think that's fair. Yes, some of the attraction is a price that undercuts taxis. I often take a Lyft to and from the airport in a city I visit fairly frequently. But literally the only reason I do that rather than take a taxi of some variety is that it's 30-40% cheaper. However, in many cases, Uber/Lyft are indeed easier to use than the alternatives. Not always--I take a private car back and forth to the airport at home--but under many circumstances.
redbrickroad 8y ago
At the current cost of a self-driving car (~$250K), it would be ridiculously expensive to build a fully self-driving ride-sharing fleet [1]. So expensive that I doubt it's possible to make real money that way right now. Self-driving cars are a long game until companies can bring down the costs. It might be years before that happens. Uber has the advantage of being able to ramp up self-driving cars as part of their existing fleet until then. [1] https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-int.. https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-int.... [2] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/ https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/ Edit: math mistake
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  The cost will go down fast.
  - redbrickroad 8y ago
    What makes you say that? Computers drive a self-driving car, and they've been at scale for a long time. It might require moving to the Tesla camera-only approach to bring down costs enough to make self-driving cars viable. But that technology is still nowhere near there.
    - gbear605 8y ago
      I'm not an expert, but I'd guess that most of the cost is not the physical hardware, but that each one is put together manually by a team of experts. That's a task that seems able to decrease significantly in price.
    - tachyonbeam 8y ago
      Costs always come down with mass production. The more self-driving cars you produce, the easier it will be to bring down costs. LIDARs themselves can likely be had for cheaper if purchased in large quantities. There are also multiple companies working on less expensive solid state LIDARs. Also, if we assume the cost of a self-driving car is 250K, that might seem like a lot, but if you amortize it over 5 years, that's 50K a year. Assuming that a car can bring in a mean profit of $10 per ride, that means it has to do 13.7 rides a day for 5 years to break even. That might seem high, but these cars are not human drivers, they don't need to sleep or take breaks, they could be on the road 20-23 hours a day, leaving some time for refueling and maintenance. I think it would be possible to bring in a profit with $250K self-driving cars and an uber-equivalent price points. It will become even easier when these cars drop to 200K, 150K and 100K, which is certain to happen once the technology spreads.
losvedir 8y ago
I legitimately thought this was parody at first. Uber did the hard work just for Google to swoop in with its self driving cars? I mean, I guess it's hard to get VCs to subsidize rides to the tune of billions of dollars, but it's not technically challenging, compared to something like self driving cars which is straight out of science fiction.
- shawn 8y ago
  It's not technically challenging, but it's harder: Politics moves more slowly than technology, and Uber had to be so good for so long that politicians had little leeway to maneuver.

mcbutterbunz 8y ago

Doesn't Uber have their own driverless car division? Toyota recently invested $500 million in it as well. I think where Uber goes from here is to compete in the space they're very familiar with.

tigershark 8y ago
Yes, and it is so good that they are the only self driving company to actually kill someone.

dilyevsky 8y ago

How is undercutting the driver (that already don’t get paid shit) going to reap massive profits? Also think about what it takes for uber to start in new city (literally a guy with a phone in a motel) vs self driving company =)

function_seven 8y ago
The driver gets about half to 3/4 of the fare. So on a hypothetical $10 trip, Uber is getting between $2.50 and $5.00 of that. Google can price a similar trip at $7, saving the rider $3 and boosting the revenue by $2 to $4.50.
- dilyevsky 8y ago
  Yeah but they are now on the hook for car maintenance, charging (or gas), parking etc etc
  - l4yao 8y ago
    I imagine those details work out to be cheaper per vehicle for a company with a large fleet of nearly identical vehicles and a dedicated operations team.
- wnissen 8y ago
  The driver grosses that much, but has to cover gas and the cost of the car itself out of their share. The actual amount the driver keeps appears to be on the order of $10 an hour, so I doubt we'll see very cheap rides any time soon.
asdff 8y ago
I've never understood why the model isn't for self driving public buses. This should be the primary focus. More riders in one vehicle lowers costs for running the service itself as well as greatly cheapening wide area coverage abilities. We all love the on-demand, single rider model that Lyft pioneered, but it also isn't sustainable with traffic demands increasing every year with population. Machine learning and productive partnerships with city traffic officials will ensure buses are routed on sensible routes that could be changed with demand without inconveniencing riders. Strictly protected bus lanes would also simplify the programming needed to maneuver a self driving vehicle through traffic.
- hindsightRegret 8y ago
  Removing one driver from a bus which can carry 30-60 people is less cost cutting than removing one driver for 1-4 passengers for a private/pooled ride. Companies don't attack problems from a societal benefit-analysis standpoint, they attack them from a profit standpoint.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

Corporate car services have existed for decades before Uber. Googe and partners popularized smartphones and mobile mapping, and developed mobile payments. Uber added nothing of relevance here except creating labor+capital intensive low paying jobs.

ghaff 8y ago
I'm no particular fan of Uber but I don't think that's fair. Yes, some of the attraction is a price that undercuts taxis. I often take a Lyft to and from the airport in a city I visit fairly frequently. But literally the only reason I do that rather than take a taxi of some variety is that it's 30-40% cheaper. However, in many cases, Uber/Lyft are indeed easier to use than the alternatives. Not always--I take a private car back and forth to the airport at home--but under many circumstances.

redbrickroad 8y ago

At the current cost of a self-driving car (~$250K), it would be ridiculously expensive to build a fully self-driving ride-sharing fleet [1]. So expensive that I doubt it's possible to make real money that way right now. Self-driving cars are a long game until companies can bring down the costs. It might be years before that happens. Uber has the advantage of being able to ramp up self-driving cars as part of their existing fleet until then. [1] https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-int.. https://qz.com/924212/what-it-really-costs-to-turn-a-car-int.... [2] https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/ https://www.uber.com/newsroom/company-info/ Edit: math mistake

adamnemecek 8y ago
The cost will go down fast.
- redbrickroad 8y ago
  What makes you say that? Computers drive a self-driving car, and they've been at scale for a long time. It might require moving to the Tesla camera-only approach to bring down costs enough to make self-driving cars viable. But that technology is still nowhere near there.
  - gbear605 8y ago
    I'm not an expert, but I'd guess that most of the cost is not the physical hardware, but that each one is put together manually by a team of experts. That's a task that seems able to decrease significantly in price.
  - tachyonbeam 8y ago
    Costs always come down with mass production. The more self-driving cars you produce, the easier it will be to bring down costs. LIDARs themselves can likely be had for cheaper if purchased in large quantities. There are also multiple companies working on less expensive solid state LIDARs. Also, if we assume the cost of a self-driving car is 250K, that might seem like a lot, but if you amortize it over 5 years, that's 50K a year. Assuming that a car can bring in a mean profit of $10 per ride, that means it has to do 13.7 rides a day for 5 years to break even. That might seem high, but these cars are not human drivers, they don't need to sleep or take breaks, they could be on the road 20-23 hours a day, leaving some time for refueling and maintenance. I think it would be possible to bring in a profit with $250K self-driving cars and an uber-equivalent price points. It will become even easier when these cars drop to 200K, 150K and 100K, which is certain to happen once the technology spreads.

losvedir 8y ago

I legitimately thought this was parody at first. Uber did the hard work just for Google to swoop in with its self driving cars? I mean, I guess it's hard to get VCs to subsidize rides to the tune of billions of dollars, but it's not technically challenging, compared to something like self driving cars which is straight out of science fiction.

shawn 8y ago
It's not technically challenging, but it's harder: Politics moves more slowly than technology, and Uber had to be so good for so long that politicians had little leeway to maneuver.