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GM shuts down car-sharing service Maven
- robodale 7y agoI read the title as car-shaming....and thought wow that's a thing?
- battery_cowboy 7y ago“We’ve gained extremely valuable insights from operating our own car-sharing business,” Pamela Fletcher, GM’s vice president of global innovation, said in a statement. “Our learnings and developments from Maven will go on to benefit and accelerate the growth of other areas of GM business.” What a load of bullshit, just say the business failed and you shut it down. This is another example of the post-truth world where anyone can say whatever they want even if it's stupid and wrong. Startups that fail didn't have a wonderful journey, products that fail don't give valuable insight into entirely different lines of business (well, they might give some insight), and an executive that leaves after 2 months isn't a good sign no matter how they twist it.
- pm90 7y agoThe ability to spin the disaster as something positive is exactly why this person is a VP at GM. This kind of skill is necessary but not sufficient to be an executive.
- achillesheels 7y agoLet’s please not generalize here. One does not need to deceive in order to be an executive. And we must make a moral example out of organizations and societies where this is considered necessary for profit.
- maxlamb 7y agoTechnically she did not deceive though. If you read what she said everything is truthful.
- ajobforme 7y agothey own cruise, which will open its own car-sharing platform in the future. Seems directly related to me.
- ghaff 7y agoGeneralized door-to-door self-driving is decades away. And when it's here, the average person isn't going to be renting out their car. If the economics work, cars will come from centralized rental services like... ZipCar. Maybe car manufacturers will decide they want to rent cars directly but they could today and don't.
- covidacct 7y agoOT, but does anyone know where the "learnings" phrase in corporatese come from? I noticed it five or six years ago and now it's everywhere. The first time I heard it was from a German VP and I assumed it was some sort of odd transliteration or maybe a Borat reference, but that hypothesis is obviously invalidated.
- tlb 7y agoI've heard it occasionally for a long time, but not much in the startup world. It's a word you reach for when you've burned through millions of dollars and someone asks, "What do we have to show for it?" "Learnings."
- bilifuduo 7y agoBill Gurley's response to this: https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1252701838496825345 https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1252701838496825345 Is he right that aggregating demand is the one and only key to a successful marketplace?
- zaidf 7y agoExcess supply gave the world AWS (abt 15 years ago)
- gruez 7y agoAFAIK that's a myth. Don't have the original source but a quick google: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-how-amazon-s-web-service-started-just-won-t-die.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/2891297/the-myth-about-...
- ghaff 7y agoWerner Vogels has also disputed the claim.
- justicezyx 7y agoCould you provide a link? Very interested in reading AMAZON CTO's opinions.
- Barrin92 7y agothe difference is that in contrast to digital roads, analogue roads are notoriously limited in growth. The transport sector does not scale in the way a digital product does, for a multitude of very obvious reasons. Simply put, it's mostly not really a technological product.
- covidacct 7y agoSeems tautological, especially for a platform biz. Companies that don't "aggregate demand" fail because "aggregating demand" is just a fancy way of saying "have a critical mass of customers". It's tautological because companies that "succeed" by aggregating supply eventually also aggregate demand because... well, because companies without customers don't "succeed". So, if you "succeed", you've aggregated demand, regardless of whether you were able to aggregate demand by aggregating supply. Teasing out the causality is hard, but it'll always be possible to post-facto confirm the hypothesis that successful (platform) companies aggregate demand. The substantive conjecture behind his tautology is about the economics and business model of SDC-as-ridesharing. Seems like a moot point to me. A working SDC will be enormously profitable regardless of whether the company that builds it gets to own the platform. Plus, the big auto cos might be able to afford to not win the SDC race, but they certainly can't afford to not even play the game. A lot of the money spent on SDCs is seen as hedging, not as serious plays.
- hhsuey 7y agoWhat exactly does he mean by "aggregating demand" and "aggregating supply?
- Jommi 7y agoI think its more related to "commoditizing" than just aggregating. E.g. if you can commoditize the demand size to a single standard unit (and then have demand to back it up) that's miles stronger than commoditizing the supply side. In this example it seems to refer to GM having the supply ready, but absolutely failing to find the commodity standard and demand base to grow forward.
- hhsuey 7y agoStill kind of confused with the jargon (what then does commoditizing demand versus supply mean?) But to be honest, what I think this all boils down to is that GM created a service that was not high in demand. IMO car sharing just isn't that high in demand as ride sharing.
- dbuder 7y agoI read stories like this and daydream about a having a consulting position where I go around to board rooms and act as a devil's advocate to all their ideas. Maybe it's that much easier in hindsight, but I can tell from a distance that the numbers will never make sense. "yes guys, uber and car share is going to be a big deal and I understand your urge to do something, but this is going to burn cash and never turn a profit".
- PaulWaldman 7y agoHow is Zipcar doing? Maven seemed to have better cars at a better price. What's the difference in their business models? Interesting that with everyone sheltering in place, now would be the time where some people realize that they may not need to own a car. Zipcar, and maybe Maven could have, been great for occasional use scenearios.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y agoIt’s still amazing how uneconomical it is to me not owning a car outside of any highly dense metropolitan are (where you can walk to get most daily supplies and parking is expensive). I mean, even a quick drive to the store to get milk is a $20 fee without a car. Doing even just a single unplanned trip a week and the economics are way out of wack.
- dublinben 7y agoNon-urban areas are almost by definition automobile-centered in a country like the US. They don't have the density required to support a lifestyle that doesn't depend on automobiles.
- shalmanese 7y agoSurely two Uber rides would be cheaper than that.
- tjohns 7y agoIn rural areas, Uber can be downright expensive. In my hometown, Uber easily charges $30-45 for a quick trip across town.
- Spivak 7y agoYeah, I think the closest you can really get is 1 car per family depending on the work/school situation but even that's kinda hard to swing. It works for me and my partner because despite being in the burbs I can walk to work so it works out being 1-2 rides a month which makes way more sense financially.
- mdorazio 7y agoFor those not aware, car sharing in general has been on the decline recently. This is after GM scaled back Maven significantly last year following bad financials in cities where it was active [1]. It turns out that different mobility options like car sharing and scooters have wildly different demand curves and expected profitability figures depending on where they're deployed due to a combination of things like culture, infrastructure, alternatives, weather, and price sensitivity. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/gms-car-sharing-service-maven-to-exit-eight-cities/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/20/gms-car-sharing-service-ma...
- infinitone 7y agoHere is a live dashboard of car sharing growth based on Turo/Getaround data: https://www.sharelytics.co/blog/the-state-of-carsharing-car-rentals-2-0/ https://www.sharelytics.co/blog/the-state-of-carsharing-car-...
- cheriot 7y agoThat's some really interesting detail. Thanks. Really weird how the growth section tracks a "Running Total" so that flat (at best) monthly rentals generate an up and to the right line.
- infinitone 7y agoIts a metabase visualization thing...
- mdorazio 7y agoTuro is a very different model, to the point it's not a great comparison. It's more of user platform (like Uber) than an actual car service and doing reasonably well as a result. But pretty much every fleet-based service is shuttering cities - ReachNow, car2go, LimePod, Maven, etc.
- chauzer 7y agoNot surprised. I had the worst experience multiple times with Maven, having my car reservation cancelled minutes before picking the car up.
- reeddavid 7y agoI'm curious why the model doesn't work. I didn't get a chance to use Maven but I loved using ReachNow, Car2Go and LimePod in Seattle before they each shut down. I would think the biggest strength of free floating car sharing would be the utilization rate of of the vehicles compared to private ownership. Looking at the vehicle availability maps, it was clear that there were a lot of trips taking place. Of course some cars ended up in low-demand areas, but on average it seemed there was a lot of rental activity. I am really curious to know what didn't work, from a business model perspective. None of the shutdown announcements have provided any specific details.
- HeavenFox 7y agoMy observation in NYC metro: the idea of car sharing is flawed because turns out most demands are for weekend trips, and on weekdays the cars sit idle, which sorta defeats the purpose of sharing. As a result, if you use cars frequently on the weekends, it's much more convenient and only a bit more expensive to have your own car.
- wmichelin 7y agoIn San Francisco, I attempted to use their service once, and I recall there being a tiny number of cars in the city, and none of them were anywhere near my home.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoI used Maven a few times. My biggest complaint was the stupid requirement to unlock the car with Bluetooth. The last time I rented a car, my phone never stayed in sync. I had to reboot my phone everytime I wanted to lock/unlock the car. And you'd better hope your phone doesn't die.
- nostromo 7y agoApparently they couldn’t raise prices without losing out to Lyft and Uber, and the cars were expensive to service and maintain.
- twblalock 7y agoOver the past few years people were saying that self-driving cars would be the end of car ownership as we know it, that the masses would adopt car sharing, and if you needed a car you would just summon one on your phone. The coronavirus has revealed how bad that idea was. Everyone who has a privately owned car is glad they have it, and they won't forget that once this is all over.
- hhsuey 7y agoJust wait till self sanitizing + self driving cars come out.
- Gustomaximus 7y agoI don't a once a century event give rationale people won't share cars. Generally people are very forgetful. E.g We have economic crashes every decade or so but perhaps even the majority of people still overspend on credit rather than sacrifice for rainy day funds. Ultimately it will come down to price, convenience and personal budget. My opinion anyway.
- robk 7y agoI don't know this makes me never ever want to lose the optionality of my own car with my own private space. Uber prices spiked where I can't even make a cost case for not having a car.
- twblalock 7y ago> Generally people are very forgetful. People won't forget about a global pandemic that locked down everyone in their homes for months. Are you joking?
- ergothus 7y agoCan you say any ways life changed due to the 1918 pandemic? Do most people even know about more recent ones? (1958?) People are terrible at adjusting, we keep asking for (our definition of) "normal"