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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 chan

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
  Indeed. And surprisingly, no one[#] has brought up that there is no such thing as as a national (or even regional) taxi service. And why is that? It's because the economics of fleet ownership don't scale to that size. If they did, we'd have a single nationwide taxi service already. In 100 years of taxis, no one has done that. [#] Except Hubert Horan who destroyed all their BS with his series, "Can Uber Ever Deliver?"
  - bduerst 7y ago
    The reason there isn't a national chain is because municipal laws fragment the market. You can typically schedule a cab for pickup in rural America (I've done it before), it is just expensive because you're also paying for a person's time to drive out there and back.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    Yeah, but arguably smartphone technology reduced admin costs and raised the size of the economically optimal taxi provider. That has been around for less than a hundred years. Edit: Dangit, I thought my reply got eaten, but I was looking at a different branch. See the rephrasing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880565
    - mimixco 7y ago
      Smartphones didn't reduce the cost of dispatch. Look what Uber spends on app development! The big costs in taxis are maintaining the fleet, a cost which Uber externalizes to its drivers, some of whom now have to sleep in their cars.
      - SilasX 7y ago
        They most certainly did. As expensive as that software is, it’s very little when amortized over the rides. It eliminates the overhead of finding a location and transmitting the info, and delivers higher value in that it gives real time data about where the car is, and lets you pay more conveniently. Also: while the drivers have physically taken over maintenance, Uber can’t push the economic cost on to them, because they have to pay enough that drivers want to continue to work even given those costs. If anything, maintenance is cheaper when handled by a big org. To the extent they realize a savings, it’s because they’re using the spare hours of existing vehicles and don’t have to take on all the dead ours they’d have from owning the cars not because they’re getting maintenance free in any meaningful sense.
mimixco 7y ago
I doubt that people who have to sleep in their cars will be able to afford an autonomous vehicle.

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
Indeed. And surprisingly, no one[#] has brought up that there is no such thing as as a national (or even regional) taxi service. And why is that? It's because the economics of fleet ownership don't scale to that size. If they did, we'd have a single nationwide taxi service already. In 100 years of taxis, no one has done that. [#] Except Hubert Horan who destroyed all their BS with his series, "Can Uber Ever Deliver?"
- bduerst 7y ago
  The reason there isn't a national chain is because municipal laws fragment the market. You can typically schedule a cab for pickup in rural America (I've done it before), it is just expensive because you're also paying for a person's time to drive out there and back.
- SilasX 7y ago
  Yeah, but arguably smartphone technology reduced admin costs and raised the size of the economically optimal taxi provider. That has been around for less than a hundred years. Edit: Dangit, I thought my reply got eaten, but I was looking at a different branch. See the rephrasing here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880565 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19880565
  - mimixco 7y ago
    Smartphones didn't reduce the cost of dispatch. Look what Uber spends on app development! The big costs in taxis are maintaining the fleet, a cost which Uber externalizes to its drivers, some of whom now have to sleep in their cars.
    - SilasX 7y ago
      They most certainly did. As expensive as that software is, it’s very little when amortized over the rides. It eliminates the overhead of finding a location and transmitting the info, and delivers higher value in that it gives real time data about where the car is, and lets you pay more conveniently. Also: while the drivers have physically taken over maintenance, Uber can’t push the economic cost on to them, because they have to pay enough that drivers want to continue to work even given those costs. If anything, maintenance is cheaper when handled by a big org. To the extent they realize a savings, it’s because they’re using the spare hours of existing vehicles and don’t have to take on all the dead ours they’d have from owning the cars not because they’re getting maintenance free in any meaningful sense.

mimixco 7y ago

I doubt that people who have to sleep in their cars will be able to afford an autonomous vehicle.