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I previously submitted 'Uber’s enormous, vague IPO prospectus is an outrage (ft.com)' Well worth reading and quite ominous in light of Lyft performance IMO htt

I previously submitted 'Uber’s enormous, vague IPO prospectus is an outrage (ft.com)' Well worth reading and quite ominous in light of Lyft performance IMO https://www.ft.com/content/60ab80e2-6a8b-11e9-9ff9-8c855179f1c4 https://www.ft.com/content/60ab80e2-6a8b-11e9-9ff9-8c855179f...

npalmer 7y ago
This is an image of the comment for those that don't have access to FT.com https://twitter.com/bytebot/status/1117323665865969664 https://twitter.com/bytebot/status/1117323665865969664
SilasX 7y ago
From the summary in the child twitter link: >We hope in the future there will be driverless cars and that we can then make money because no drivers but other people are developing them too. Nice! It's common to think that self-driving cars will be Uber's salvation, but even then, they'll have to come with other SDC providers, so there's no moat. They'd have lower costs, but so would everyone else, and so they'd have to cut fares proportionally. In theory, they can have such a lead time on a workable SDC that they get a great moat until everyone catches up. But that would be ~2 years at the absurdly optimistic end; not enough to pay back the costs of the program and throw off the huge returns investors demand. And in reality, Uber is lagging on this.
- mimixco 7y ago
  The self driving car idea won't help Uber or Lyft for two reasons. First, neither company has the tech experience to build one. Second, and more importantly, both companies would have to buy and maintain the cars which isn't financially viable.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    They're hoping you'll buy a self-driving car and then let them pay you a minimal fee to use it when you're not. The problem is that self-driving cars will change car ownership needs, and that there could be entirely different companies in the space when it does finally come around.
    - SilasX 7y ago
      It's not unrealistic to roll that out as a profitable service. It is unrealistic to expect that to be a moat-profitable income source for Uber, when you can rent that same SDC to Lyft -- or Tesla, for that matter [1] -- who will offer competitive terms. [1] If they offer it for their own cars, they could probably extend the platform to allow outside cars, perhaps with different branding.
      - bduerst 7y ago
        Yep, the landscape will probably be entirely different and we'll be talking about the next ridesharing unicorn that managed to corner the self-driving rideshare market.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      I'm not sure I buy that scenario... Is there any other market where random consumers are basically acting as financiers for a commercial fleet of equipment? What's the reason for the fleet operator to involve those customer-owners at all? In terms of immediate cost, it will be cheaper as a customer just to use the ride sharing service yourself, since you won't have to pay car payments you'll just pay the rideshare fee. Especially if the self driving software gets priced in the $10,000+ range as Tesla has suggested it will end up. So anyone in the "budget" category will just be buying rides not vehicles. They'll have to wait 5 minutes for a vehicle, and they won't get to have their vehicle of choice, but they also won't have to deal with the hassle of running a mini carshare business, whatever that will entail. Most people in the "premium" category isn't going to want random drunk people fingerblasting each other in the back seat of their nice car, so that cuts out the top of the market. That leaves what... people who want to save some money but also really want to own their own car, but also are comfortable sharing it with random people? Seems like a weird segment. Why wouldn't the fleet operator just buy cars and own them? They're going to be burning through these vehicles every 5 years anyway, what's the point of parking them in a random owner-operator's garage and having them taking it out of the fleet when they feel like it?
      - mimixco 7y ago
  - kmonsen 7y ago
    And maintain includes very regular things like cleaning etc. I can't imagine this is things they want to do so it will probably stay a network Tesla style, but with lower (hopefully) costs.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    And in the (imho unlikely) scenario that fully autonomous taxis are a viable mass market opportunity in the foreseeable future, both companies would find that rivals who actually do make the cars and have networks of maintenance centres are in a much better competitive position. Making the pricing and matching app isn't the difficult part, and Uber's existing driver base ceases to have value
  - kevin_b_er 7y ago
    Indeed, part of the ability for the driving "gig economy" is the masking of risk and liability from the corporation onto the individual driving humans for car expenses and depreciation. The myriad of humans thinking Uber/Lyft are job have yet to get caught up the the expense of the car itself. Uber/Lyft both hope they can get to self driving cars before the drivers figure out the true cost after the car they provided to Uber for free is involved.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    > neither company has the tech experience to build one They have the experience to distribute software to millions of devices on a regular basis and run a logistics platform and a consumer app. That's something automakers will struggle to do. Automakers can build cars. That's something Über will struggle to do. Seems like a fairly straightforward partnership to me. There are many automakers and most of them (anything vaguely in the budget category) will be struggling mightily if robotaxis ever work. Mightily struggling automakers like to make deals where they get to make autos.
    - mimixco 7y ago
      The tech to distribute an app? You mean Google Play, lol? A teenager can get an app in there. Uber can't afford to run a national taxi service at scale for the same reasons no one else has ever done so. The economics of a taxi fleet don't scale to that size. Owning their own autonomous vehicles would only further erode their non-existent business model.
      - erikpukinskis 7y ago
        No, I mean built the app, maintain it, build a relationship with users, get people to download it and tell their friends, all of that. > The economics of a [self driving] taxi fleet don't scale to that size. I'd be interested in hearing your analysis! I haven't heard that one. Tesla claims these vehicles will pay themselves off within two to three years once they can operate fully autonomously.
        mimixco 7y ago
        Hubert Horan has done an amazing teardown with his series, "Can Uber Ever Deliver?" But you don't need to be a transportation logistics expert (as he is) to see that there are no national or even regional cab companies. The reason is that, after a certain size, the business simply doesn't scale.
        SilasX 7y ago
  - mimixco 7y ago
    Downvoting this doesn't make it any less true. Sorry, Uber shills on HN. You can be in denial as long as you like and it doesn't change anything.
    - dang 7y ago
      This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review them and follow them when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

npalmer 7y ago

This is an image of the comment for those that don't have access to FT.com https://twitter.com/bytebot/status/1117323665865969664 https://twitter.com/bytebot/status/1117323665865969664

SilasX 7y ago

From the summary in the child twitter link: >We hope in the future there will be driverless cars and that we can then make money because no drivers but other people are developing them too. Nice! It's common to think that self-driving cars will be Uber's salvation, but even then, they'll have to come with other SDC providers, so there's no moat. They'd have lower costs, but so would everyone else, and so they'd have to cut fares proportionally. In theory, they can have such a lead time on a workable SDC that they get a great moat until everyone catches up. But that would be ~2 years at the absurdly optimistic end; not enough to pay back the costs of the program and throw off the huge returns investors demand. And in reality, Uber is lagging on this.

mimixco 7y ago
The self driving car idea won't help Uber or Lyft for two reasons. First, neither company has the tech experience to build one. Second, and more importantly, both companies would have to buy and maintain the cars which isn't financially viable.
- bduerst 7y ago
  They're hoping you'll buy a self-driving car and then let them pay you a minimal fee to use it when you're not. The problem is that self-driving cars will change car ownership needs, and that there could be entirely different companies in the space when it does finally come around.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    It's not unrealistic to roll that out as a profitable service. It is unrealistic to expect that to be a moat-profitable income source for Uber, when you can rent that same SDC to Lyft -- or Tesla, for that matter [1] -- who will offer competitive terms. [1] If they offer it for their own cars, they could probably extend the platform to allow outside cars, perhaps with different branding.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      Yep, the landscape will probably be entirely different and we'll be talking about the next ridesharing unicorn that managed to corner the self-driving rideshare market.
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    I'm not sure I buy that scenario... Is there any other market where random consumers are basically acting as financiers for a commercial fleet of equipment? What's the reason for the fleet operator to involve those customer-owners at all? In terms of immediate cost, it will be cheaper as a customer just to use the ride sharing service yourself, since you won't have to pay car payments you'll just pay the rideshare fee. Especially if the self driving software gets priced in the $10,000+ range as Tesla has suggested it will end up. So anyone in the "budget" category will just be buying rides not vehicles. They'll have to wait 5 minutes for a vehicle, and they won't get to have their vehicle of choice, but they also won't have to deal with the hassle of running a mini carshare business, whatever that will entail. Most people in the "premium" category isn't going to want random drunk people fingerblasting each other in the back seat of their nice car, so that cuts out the top of the market. That leaves what... people who want to save some money but also really want to own their own car, but also are comfortable sharing it with random people? Seems like a weird segment. Why wouldn't the fleet operator just buy cars and own them? They're going to be burning through these vehicles every 5 years anyway, what's the point of parking them in a random owner-operator's garage and having them taking it out of the fleet when they feel like it?
    - mimixco 7y ago
- kmonsen 7y ago
  And maintain includes very regular things like cleaning etc. I can't imagine this is things they want to do so it will probably stay a network Tesla style, but with lower (hopefully) costs.
- notahacker 7y ago
  And in the (imho unlikely) scenario that fully autonomous taxis are a viable mass market opportunity in the foreseeable future, both companies would find that rivals who actually do make the cars and have networks of maintenance centres are in a much better competitive position. Making the pricing and matching app isn't the difficult part, and Uber's existing driver base ceases to have value
- kevin_b_er 7y ago
  Indeed, part of the ability for the driving "gig economy" is the masking of risk and liability from the corporation onto the individual driving humans for car expenses and depreciation. The myriad of humans thinking Uber/Lyft are job have yet to get caught up the the expense of the car itself. Uber/Lyft both hope they can get to self driving cars before the drivers figure out the true cost after the car they provided to Uber for free is involved.
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  > neither company has the tech experience to build one They have the experience to distribute software to millions of devices on a regular basis and run a logistics platform and a consumer app. That's something automakers will struggle to do. Automakers can build cars. That's something Über will struggle to do. Seems like a fairly straightforward partnership to me. There are many automakers and most of them (anything vaguely in the budget category) will be struggling mightily if robotaxis ever work. Mightily struggling automakers like to make deals where they get to make autos.
  - mimixco 7y ago
    The tech to distribute an app? You mean Google Play, lol? A teenager can get an app in there. Uber can't afford to run a national taxi service at scale for the same reasons no one else has ever done so. The economics of a taxi fleet don't scale to that size. Owning their own autonomous vehicles would only further erode their non-existent business model.
    - erikpukinskis 7y ago
      No, I mean built the app, maintain it, build a relationship with users, get people to download it and tell their friends, all of that. > The economics of a [self driving] taxi fleet don't scale to that size. I'd be interested in hearing your analysis! I haven't heard that one. Tesla claims these vehicles will pay themselves off within two to three years once they can operate fully autonomously.
      - mimixco 7y ago
        Hubert Horan has done an amazing teardown with his series, "Can Uber Ever Deliver?" But you don't need to be a transportation logistics expert (as he is) to see that there are no national or even regional cab companies. The reason is that, after a certain size, the business simply doesn't scale.
        SilasX 7y ago
- mimixco 7y ago
  Downvoting this doesn't make it any less true. Sorry, Uber shills on HN. You can be in denial as long as you like and it doesn't change anything.
  - dang 7y ago
    This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review them and follow them when posting here? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html