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>Seriously, what's Uber/Lyft's long term goal? Massive fleets of autonomous vehicles transporting people. People often fall into the trap of seeing Uber and L

>Seriously, what's Uber/Lyft's long term goal? Massive fleets of autonomous vehicles transporting people. People often fall into the trap of seeing Uber and Lyft as a taxi service, they are absolutely autonomous vehicle companies. The human drivers are simply there to collect massive amounts of data, and build brand recognition, while the autonomous vehicle technology comes to maturity.

saalweachter 8y ago
That's because they've done a shit job of building out a business that could act as the autotaxi. They are terribly placed to take advantage of self-driving vehicles, even if they perfect one, and they are spending in ways that are completely useless towards that long-term goal. A self-driving taxi company is going to look a lot like a car dealership that doesn't sell cars, or a lot like a taxi company that doesn't have any drivers. They're going to have a huge number of cars, parking lots to store cars that aren't in use, and technicians to service, clean and fuel vehicles periodically. Uber has none of these. Meanwhile, they're blowing through most of their venture capital selling rides below cost. This does nothing for their self-driving goals, because they aren't acquiring a "market", because there is no stickiness in taxi customers. It just wastes capital they will one day need to buy a huge number of self-driving vehicles and their maintenance facilities throughout the world. They would be better off sitting on that giant pile of money, or operate as a cash-losing taxi company so they can build out their maintenance facilities with venture capital while having regular drivers drive regular cars (which could also be serving as platforms for data gathering and training machine learning models).
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  The UX for self driving Uber === the UX for Uber now The only theoretical differentiator is price. At the moment VC subsides are removing that as well
  - ghaff 8y ago
    I'm not sure why the downvotes, you're basically correct. I really don't care much whether it's a person or a computer driving me around. What I care about is the price. People seem to implicitly assume that autonomous driving will make getting driven around really cheap. But all you're really doing is taking a ~minimum wage driver out of the loop. A good starting point for costs is the $0.50ish/mile IRS mileage deduction which is maybe about half Lyft/Uber pricing today. That's a significant difference but I'm not sure it's a radically alter everyone's behavior difference.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    The UX is such a minuscule part of the business compared to the logistical operations that Uber/Lyft don't have. (Remember, Apple always had the UX. What made it rich is the supply chain, which is why Tim Cook is CEO.)
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  >A self-driving taxi company is going to look a lot like a car dealership that doesn't sell cars, or a lot like a taxi company that doesn't have any drivers. They're going to have a huge number of cars, parking lots to store cars that aren't in use, and technicians to service, clean and fuel vehicles periodically. No? You'll need charging stations to charge vehicles and will have enough to meet typical demand, when a large event is expected you have vehicles come in from other areas (Indy 500, Superbowl, etc). If vehicles aren't driving people or charging you use them as courier vehicles. Yes you'll still maintain some in parking structures at some hours but with no driver needed you can pack considerably more into the same space as a vehicle that would require a human being to enter and exit the vehicle to move it. Kids in their teens and early 20's are losing their desire to drive, individuals are getting their licenses much later. This is already a sign that a carless society is a very real possibility. These companies know that, they're working on taking the human driver out of the equation, they're building brand recognition, they're getting people comfortable with using a driving service (a large portion of the population has never used a taxi or even public transportation, yet within a few years hopping in a car with a stranger became normal) and they're collecting more data on driving and human movement via vehicle than ever before. >Meanwhile, they're blowing through most of their venture capital selling rides below cost. They are investing money in collecting data. The data alone they are collecting is worth the money they are burning through. You can't go buy that data from someone because it has never been collected and there's many ways to exploit that data to generate revenue both now and in the future as technologies become available like autonomous vehicles.
  - saalweachter 8y ago
    Just driving around cars that aren't in use gets brought up with self-driving cars all the time, but it's just a terrible idea, even ignoring the traffic considerations. You want them evenly distributed so they can be summoned quickly, sure, but wear and tear on all the expensive parts of a car is proportional to road miles. You want to park them somewhere when they're not in use, and as long as you have peak hours you're going to have times where you need more or less cars. Re: venture capital use, there are currently 65,000 Uber-affiliated cars in NYC alone, according to a random search. If you were to replace all of those with self-driving cars at $50,000 a pop, that would be $3 billion right there. You can argue they'll only need a tenth that number because of self-driving efficiencies and because most Uber drivers aren't constantly driving (for comparison, NYC allows ~13k taxies) and claim they'll be able to manufacture a self-driving car for half that, but you're still talking hundreds of millions of dollars for a single market. To replace their current fleet of sub-contracted drivers with self-driving cars is going to cost billions and billions of dollars. Uber currently has something like $7B on hand and is burning through nearly a billion a quarter. So 2021 comes around, and self-driving technology has been perfected by Uber, Google, Tesla and Ford. You are a VC -- or a regular investor if Uber is public -- looking to invest in a self-driving taxi company. Two companies are seeking $10B to build out their world-wide fleet of self-driving taxis. Would you rather invest in Uber, which has a successful ride-hailing App and an internally built self-driving car and is $20B in the hole on VC investment already, or would you rather invest in a newly formed corporation, Bob's Friendly Taxi Company, which has nothing, and is going to use its VC funds to buy a bunch of self-driving vehicles and develop a new ride-hailing app from scratch?

saalweachter 8y ago

That's because they've done a shit job of building out a business that could act as the autotaxi. They are terribly placed to take advantage of self-driving vehicles, even if they perfect one, and they are spending in ways that are completely useless towards that long-term goal. A self-driving taxi company is going to look a lot like a car dealership that doesn't sell cars, or a lot like a taxi company that doesn't have any drivers. They're going to have a huge number of cars, parking lots to store cars that aren't in use, and technicians to service, clean and fuel vehicles periodically. Uber has none of these. Meanwhile, they're blowing through most of their venture capital selling rides below cost. This does nothing for their self-driving goals, because they aren't acquiring a "market", because there is no stickiness in taxi customers. It just wastes capital they will one day need to buy a huge number of self-driving vehicles and their maintenance facilities throughout the world. They would be better off sitting on that giant pile of money, or operate as a cash-losing taxi company so they can build out their maintenance facilities with venture capital while having regular drivers drive regular cars (which could also be serving as platforms for data gathering and training machine learning models).

albertgoeswoof 8y ago
The UX for self driving Uber === the UX for Uber now The only theoretical differentiator is price. At the moment VC subsides are removing that as well
- ghaff 8y ago
  I'm not sure why the downvotes, you're basically correct. I really don't care much whether it's a person or a computer driving me around. What I care about is the price. People seem to implicitly assume that autonomous driving will make getting driven around really cheap. But all you're really doing is taking a ~minimum wage driver out of the loop. A good starting point for costs is the $0.50ish/mile IRS mileage deduction which is maybe about half Lyft/Uber pricing today. That's a significant difference but I'm not sure it's a radically alter everyone's behavior difference.
- rayiner 8y ago
  The UX is such a minuscule part of the business compared to the logistical operations that Uber/Lyft don't have. (Remember, Apple always had the UX. What made it rich is the supply chain, which is why Tim Cook is CEO.)
ryanmercer 8y ago
>A self-driving taxi company is going to look a lot like a car dealership that doesn't sell cars, or a lot like a taxi company that doesn't have any drivers. They're going to have a huge number of cars, parking lots to store cars that aren't in use, and technicians to service, clean and fuel vehicles periodically. No? You'll need charging stations to charge vehicles and will have enough to meet typical demand, when a large event is expected you have vehicles come in from other areas (Indy 500, Superbowl, etc). If vehicles aren't driving people or charging you use them as courier vehicles. Yes you'll still maintain some in parking structures at some hours but with no driver needed you can pack considerably more into the same space as a vehicle that would require a human being to enter and exit the vehicle to move it. Kids in their teens and early 20's are losing their desire to drive, individuals are getting their licenses much later. This is already a sign that a carless society is a very real possibility. These companies know that, they're working on taking the human driver out of the equation, they're building brand recognition, they're getting people comfortable with using a driving service (a large portion of the population has never used a taxi or even public transportation, yet within a few years hopping in a car with a stranger became normal) and they're collecting more data on driving and human movement via vehicle than ever before. >Meanwhile, they're blowing through most of their venture capital selling rides below cost. They are investing money in collecting data. The data alone they are collecting is worth the money they are burning through. You can't go buy that data from someone because it has never been collected and there's many ways to exploit that data to generate revenue both now and in the future as technologies become available like autonomous vehicles.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  Just driving around cars that aren't in use gets brought up with self-driving cars all the time, but it's just a terrible idea, even ignoring the traffic considerations. You want them evenly distributed so they can be summoned quickly, sure, but wear and tear on all the expensive parts of a car is proportional to road miles. You want to park them somewhere when they're not in use, and as long as you have peak hours you're going to have times where you need more or less cars. Re: venture capital use, there are currently 65,000 Uber-affiliated cars in NYC alone, according to a random search. If you were to replace all of those with self-driving cars at $50,000 a pop, that would be $3 billion right there. You can argue they'll only need a tenth that number because of self-driving efficiencies and because most Uber drivers aren't constantly driving (for comparison, NYC allows ~13k taxies) and claim they'll be able to manufacture a self-driving car for half that, but you're still talking hundreds of millions of dollars for a single market. To replace their current fleet of sub-contracted drivers with self-driving cars is going to cost billions and billions of dollars. Uber currently has something like $7B on hand and is burning through nearly a billion a quarter. So 2021 comes around, and self-driving technology has been perfected by Uber, Google, Tesla and Ford. You are a VC -- or a regular investor if Uber is public -- looking to invest in a self-driving taxi company. Two companies are seeking $10B to build out their world-wide fleet of self-driving taxis. Would you rather invest in Uber, which has a successful ride-hailing App and an internally built self-driving car and is $20B in the hole on VC investment already, or would you rather invest in a newly formed corporation, Bob's Friendly Taxi Company, which has nothing, and is going to use its VC funds to buy a bunch of self-driving vehicles and develop a new ride-hailing app from scratch?