11 ms·

No, that was never the strategy, no matter how many times people on HN claimed it was. Both Uber and Lyft are aiming for profitability next year with human driv

by necubi 6y ago

No, that was never the strategy, no matter how many times people on HN claimed it was. Both Uber and Lyft are aiming for profitability next year with human drivers. (Disclaimer, I work for Lyft but this has been said in public many, many times by both companies.)

esotericimpl 6y ago
except this is impossible: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-three-ubers-already-hopelessly-unprofitable-economics-take-a-major-coronavirus-hit.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/hubert-horan-can-ube...
dcolkitt 6y ago
That might not be their internal strategy, but that's pretty much the investment thesis of every Uber bull buying their stock at $100 billion market cap.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I actually poked into this a bit out of curiosity. Without doing deeper research than I have any interest in, indeed Kalanick never seems to have publicly said anything like "We are so f'ed without self-driving" (which would be a truly idiotic thing to do) and even made some references to the length of the transition. But he also made reference to things like Uber's growth being limited until Uber was cheaper than owning a car and a ton of pubs seem to have "independently" reached the opinion that this was necessary. And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    >And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard. Why would there be? If it's helping their stock price or even neutral to it then why deny it and risk it going down?
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      It seems like a narrow path to try to navigate. When a reporter prefaces a question with "Next year when you've perfected your transform-manure-into-gold machine..." it seems executives either quash that nonsense, run away screaming "I can't hear you!", or make themselves liable when the TMIG machine doesn't ever work.
  - jocker12 6y ago
    "If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick said." - https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...
dgrin91 6y ago
Can you point to some sources to back that up? I have always been under the impression that self driving was the end goal that they were all working towards.
- jeromegv 6y ago
  Everytime someone mentioned that idea I thought it made no sense. The Uber strategy is to delegate all the cost to a 3rd party (the driver and their own car). The idea of spending billions of dollar on hundreds of thousands of cars around the world and maintain them hardly seemed like what they were setup to do. They wanted the exact opposite. Externalize all cost, labor, material, etc. and just develop a software that generates them a % of profit. This would be an entire 180° in terms of business strategy.
  - metiscus 6y ago
    So if they invent the first reasonable self-driving car, they can sell those and provide service for them. Ideally TCO would be lower than a human driven car so basically a third party could buy and manage the fleet for Uber and Lyft. Neither company would need to own the cars to reap the benefits of making them.
    - taneq 6y ago
      They could, but that’s a completely different business to building middleware to facilitate unlicensed taxis. It’s like saying “AirB&B will help people rent their spare rooms out until they launch their own hotel chain.”
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    How do drivers make any money while keeping the overall price less than a taxi? Factor in fuel and maintenance, and drivers are already getting pretty screwed on these platforms.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Absent self-driving--which was always a pipe dream--the overall price will not be materially lower than a taxi. Perhaps people will prefer the service for other reasons. Perhaps they'll go back to transporting themselves however they were pre-Uber.
aardvarkr 6y ago
That seems disingenuous and intended to save face. I liken this to the Soviets claiming they never lost the space race after the US moon landing because "landing humans was never the goal" and they denied ever building a lunar lander. I think the kids these days call it gaslighting. Statements from key executives at uber like Meyhofer who said “The ultimate north star for the company is Level 4 autonomy” are proof of this intent.
- aardvarkr 6y ago
  Yeah the more I look the more I find proof that self-driving cars has been seen as an existential threat by Uber/Lyft for years and years with Travis Kalanick (ex-CEO) saying it repeatedly. Here's an interview from him on exactly this topic. https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...
  - necubi 6y ago
    If there are competitors (e.g., Waymo) that have self-driving that's significantly cheaper, then Uber and Lyft can't compete. So it's a huge potential threat to their businesses. And if self-driving makes rides much cheaper, that can significantly boost the size of the market. But that does not imply that they can't be successful and profitable businesses in a world without self-driving cars, which is the frequently-made claim in the top post.
    - cmsj 6y ago
      Realistically though it's about as much of an actual threat as teleporters are.
    - mkolodny 6y ago
      I agree that saying self-driving is a threat is very different from saying that your business will fail unless you create self-driving cars. Also, saying that Uber/Lyft need to create their own self-driving cars is ignoring the fact that other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies.
yumraj 6y ago
It may not be the strategy, but it is definitely the only reasonable path to profitability where the drivers will make at least a reasonable income and the cost of a ride is competitive with a cab. Either ways, next year is pretty close. Perhaps I'd be proven wrong.
- jeltz 6y ago
  Only because they have burned so much VC. Both Uber and Bolt charge like normal taxi companies in Stockholm and can therefore afford to pay their drivers at the same time as making a profit. And as far as I know Bolt is basically already profitable, they just copied Uber's business but reduced the administration costs and did not blow a ton of cash on self driving cars. Having their HQ in Tallinn rather than SF also helps. There is definitely a market for a modern taxi company, but it won't be as cheap as Uber is in the US. And Uber has too large overhead.
  - deeeeplearning 6y ago
    Hard to pay your execs and engineers insanely bloated Tech salaries on Taxi profit margins. It's a bubble ready to pop.The guy saying they will profitable in the next year is delusional.
    - azylman 6y ago
      "The guy" - the CEOs of both companies? You're essentially stating that the CEOs of Uber any Lyft are lying to their investors, which is a crime. That's a serious accusation and some actual evidence is needed.
      - rabuse 6y ago
        This is hilarious, honestly. Who was arrested at Helios Matheson with the joke that was MoviePass?
      - nmfisher 6y ago
        No, he's stating the CEO is delusional. It's not a crime if you honestly believe what you're saying. (Oversimplification, of course. I'm fully aware of corporate obligations around market disclosure, profit forecasts, etc).
dustinmoris 6y ago
Profitability maybe, but the obscene valuation was based on Uber having a self driving fleet one day, at least to my understanding. Many businesses are profitable and even much more profitable than what Uber might be in a few years time and yet they have never come close to any valuation such as Uber has seen.
- Jommi 6y ago
  Why are you repeating this falsehood? What facts do you have to present that Ubers current valuation is majorly driven by a selfdriving future?
dmix 6y ago
And nothing about this deal indicates Uber is stepping away from self driving cars. They basically structured the deal as buying stock in the company and investing $400M. Letting them focus on their core business while still having a large financial stake in AI cars. The big development is that self driving cars turned out to be an extremely hard problem which didn’t match company timelines (or potentially company business models, if for example AI kits can get installed in existing cars and brands for which they become the denominate call network) and they outsourced it to one of the best companies around.
- cmsj 6y ago
  "turned out"... it's been starkly obvious since day one that true self-driving is a problem that requires general intelligence to solve. All you have to do to know that is drive a car and think about what's actually required to successfully drive from A to B in the real world.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/waymo-opens-driverless-robo-taxi-service-to-the-public-in-phoenix-idUKL1N2GY21V https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way... Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'll go mainstream.
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      Something something "self-driving-complete"...
    - bo1024 6y ago
      This doesn't prove that the technology is ready or safe. It only proves that Waymo thinks it's a worthwhile gamble. This is the same place where Uber's self-driving car killed a person with no repercussions to the company.
khazhoux 6y ago
One of their execs literally pitched me this very vision when I turned Uber down for an eng mgr position several years ago. I thought it was comical that his pitch was "The reason we're going to be successful at Problem 1 (taxis) is because we're going to be successful at ridiculously-difficult Problem 2 (self-driving) which we're not close to solving". Pass.
- Apocryphon 6y ago
  Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.
  - notyourwork 6y ago
    Ubers not been one to shy away from legal skirmishes though.
    - coddle-hark 6y ago
      Even so, profitable self driving is binary; either there’s a human driver in the car or there isn’t. Uber is ”bold” but not bold enough to put thousands of self-driving cars on the road illegally.
  - Fordec 6y ago
    As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers. One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system. Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries) to see how the change in production (ie a new law introduced) had second order effects.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
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jypepin 6y ago
That's just not true. Way before Uber IPO'ed and started aiming at profitability next year, self-driving cars was the big thing for Uber's future. (Disclaimer, I worked at Uber 2014-18).
- necubi 6y ago
  I'm not saying there wasn't excitement about AVs. The specific claim I'm disputing (which I've heard over and over again over the past few years) is that either company considered AVs to be the only path to profitability. The history is a bit complicated, because before the IPOs neither company was focused on profitability as a primary goal.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    I agree for Lyft but Uber pretty aggressively pushed the vision as necessary for their future when they were burning so much cash on ATG.
    - jessriedel 6y ago
      They pushed it as necessary for their future because the future will be self-driving and anyone without access to that tech will be out-competed. That's completely different than it being necessary to their future because their present business model cannot be made profitable.
      - mrgordon 6y ago
        You contradicted yourself. You said anyone without access to self driving will be out-competed but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary for them. It’s extremely necessary for them. I’d much rather take a driverless Waymo than a ride with a random Uber driver that might be driving distractedly, might get lost, etc. Not to mention the robotaxi should be cheaper at scale as they can operate 24 hours a day.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
ProAm 6y ago
Does profitability equate to paying back all the VC money burned getting to this point? They were losing billions every quarter for a long time. I haven't looked at their quarterlies in a while though but Id be surprised if they were remotely right-side up.
- quickthrowman 6y ago
  No, it means a profitable quarter.
- ksenzee 6y ago
  No, because the VC money is equity rather than debt. Profitability doesn't include "make sure the owners get some cash." It just means you made more money than you spent this quarter.
- pault 6y ago
  Investment rounds aren't loans, they're... Investments. You're selling them a stake in the company, not borrowing money. I'm sure there are exceptions but that's generally how it works.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
What strategies do rideshare companies plan to employ to reach profitability: increasing prices, cutting costs, etc? And what will the implications be for riders and employees alike.
- ghaff 6y ago
  My assumption would be both. Taxi companies have way lower cost structures. They certainly don't employ lots of software engineers. And there's no reason to think that Uber should be significantly cheaper than a taxi ride. Scale buys you something but probably not a lot. (And scale has some costs too.)
  - pishpash 6y ago
    You underestimate what you can extract from making the market larger and more efficient, which taxis could never do. Why don't people barter instead of paying huge sums to Wall Street to intermediate?
    - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
      Bartering in this problem space is hard. Let me call up 5 of my closest friends in my city, to see if they want to leave their home, drive me from Point A to Point B, then go home, right now.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      In part, because, on an individual basis, Wall Street's skim is tiny. It's only big in aggregate.
boston_sre87 6y ago
What is the strategy to get to profitability then? Have only heard of the self driving route before.
jocker12 6y ago
"If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick said." - https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...

by necubi 6y ago

esotericimpl 6y ago

except this is impossible: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-three-ubers-already-hopelessly-unprofitable-economics-take-a-major-coronavirus-hit.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/08/hubert-horan-can-ube...

dcolkitt 6y ago

That might not be their internal strategy, but that's pretty much the investment thesis of every Uber bull buying their stock at $100 billion market cap.

ghaff 6y ago
I actually poked into this a bit out of curiosity. Without doing deeper research than I have any interest in, indeed Kalanick never seems to have publicly said anything like "We are so f'ed without self-driving" (which would be a truly idiotic thing to do) and even made some references to the length of the transition. But he also made reference to things like Uber's growth being limited until Uber was cheaper than owning a car and a ton of pubs seem to have "independently" reached the opinion that this was necessary. And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard. Why would there be? If it's helping their stock price or even neutral to it then why deny it and risk it going down?
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    It seems like a narrow path to try to navigate. When a reporter prefaces a question with "Next year when you've perfected your transform-manure-into-gold machine..." it seems executives either quash that nonsense, run away screaming "I can't hear you!", or make themselves liable when the TMIG machine doesn't ever work.
- jocker12 6y ago
  "If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick said." - https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...

dgrin91 6y ago

Can you point to some sources to back that up? I have always been under the impression that self driving was the end goal that they were all working towards.

jeromegv 6y ago
Everytime someone mentioned that idea I thought it made no sense. The Uber strategy is to delegate all the cost to a 3rd party (the driver and their own car). The idea of spending billions of dollar on hundreds of thousands of cars around the world and maintain them hardly seemed like what they were setup to do. They wanted the exact opposite. Externalize all cost, labor, material, etc. and just develop a software that generates them a % of profit. This would be an entire 180° in terms of business strategy.
- metiscus 6y ago
  So if they invent the first reasonable self-driving car, they can sell those and provide service for them. Ideally TCO would be lower than a human driven car so basically a third party could buy and manage the fleet for Uber and Lyft. Neither company would need to own the cars to reap the benefits of making them.
  - taneq 6y ago
    They could, but that’s a completely different business to building middleware to facilitate unlicensed taxis. It’s like saying “AirB&B will help people rent their spare rooms out until they launch their own hotel chain.”
- pmiller2 6y ago
  How do drivers make any money while keeping the overall price less than a taxi? Factor in fuel and maintenance, and drivers are already getting pretty screwed on these platforms.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Absent self-driving--which was always a pipe dream--the overall price will not be materially lower than a taxi. Perhaps people will prefer the service for other reasons. Perhaps they'll go back to transporting themselves however they were pre-Uber.

aardvarkr 6y ago

That seems disingenuous and intended to save face. I liken this to the Soviets claiming they never lost the space race after the US moon landing because "landing humans was never the goal" and they denied ever building a lunar lander. I think the kids these days call it gaslighting. Statements from key executives at uber like Meyhofer who said “The ultimate north star for the company is Level 4 autonomy” are proof of this intent.

aardvarkr 6y ago
Yeah the more I look the more I find proof that self-driving cars has been seen as an existential threat by Uber/Lyft for years and years with Travis Kalanick (ex-CEO) saying it repeatedly. Here's an interview from him on exactly this topic. https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...
- necubi 6y ago
  If there are competitors (e.g., Waymo) that have self-driving that's significantly cheaper, then Uber and Lyft can't compete. So it's a huge potential threat to their businesses. And if self-driving makes rides much cheaper, that can significantly boost the size of the market. But that does not imply that they can't be successful and profitable businesses in a world without self-driving cars, which is the frequently-made claim in the top post.
  - cmsj 6y ago
    Realistically though it's about as much of an actual threat as teleporters are.
  - mkolodny 6y ago
    I agree that saying self-driving is a threat is very different from saying that your business will fail unless you create self-driving cars. Also, saying that Uber/Lyft need to create their own self-driving cars is ignoring the fact that other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies.

yumraj 6y ago

It may not be the strategy, but it is definitely the only reasonable path to profitability where the drivers will make at least a reasonable income and the cost of a ride is competitive with a cab. Either ways, next year is pretty close. Perhaps I'd be proven wrong.

jeltz 6y ago
Only because they have burned so much VC. Both Uber and Bolt charge like normal taxi companies in Stockholm and can therefore afford to pay their drivers at the same time as making a profit. And as far as I know Bolt is basically already profitable, they just copied Uber's business but reduced the administration costs and did not blow a ton of cash on self driving cars. Having their HQ in Tallinn rather than SF also helps. There is definitely a market for a modern taxi company, but it won't be as cheap as Uber is in the US. And Uber has too large overhead.
- deeeeplearning 6y ago
  Hard to pay your execs and engineers insanely bloated Tech salaries on Taxi profit margins. It's a bubble ready to pop.The guy saying they will profitable in the next year is delusional.
  - azylman 6y ago
    "The guy" - the CEOs of both companies? You're essentially stating that the CEOs of Uber any Lyft are lying to their investors, which is a crime. That's a serious accusation and some actual evidence is needed.
    - rabuse 6y ago
      This is hilarious, honestly. Who was arrested at Helios Matheson with the joke that was MoviePass?
    - nmfisher 6y ago
      No, he's stating the CEO is delusional. It's not a crime if you honestly believe what you're saying. (Oversimplification, of course. I'm fully aware of corporate obligations around market disclosure, profit forecasts, etc).

dustinmoris 6y ago

Profitability maybe, but the obscene valuation was based on Uber having a self driving fleet one day, at least to my understanding. Many businesses are profitable and even much more profitable than what Uber might be in a few years time and yet they have never come close to any valuation such as Uber has seen.

Jommi 6y ago
Why are you repeating this falsehood? What facts do you have to present that Ubers current valuation is majorly driven by a selfdriving future?

dmix 6y ago

And nothing about this deal indicates Uber is stepping away from self driving cars. They basically structured the deal as buying stock in the company and investing $400M. Letting them focus on their core business while still having a large financial stake in AI cars. The big development is that self driving cars turned out to be an extremely hard problem which didn’t match company timelines (or potentially company business models, if for example AI kits can get installed in existing cars and brands for which they become the denominate call network) and they outsourced it to one of the best companies around.

cmsj 6y ago
"turned out"... it's been starkly obvious since day one that true self-driving is a problem that requires general intelligence to solve. All you have to do to know that is drive a car and think about what's actually required to successfully drive from A to B in the real world.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet. https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/waymo-opens-driverless-robo-taxi-service-to-the-public-in-phoenix-idUKL1N2GY21V https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way... Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'll go mainstream.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Something something "self-driving-complete"...
  - bo1024 6y ago
    This doesn't prove that the technology is ready or safe. It only proves that Waymo thinks it's a worthwhile gamble. This is the same place where Uber's self-driving car killed a person with no repercussions to the company.

khazhoux 6y ago

One of their execs literally pitched me this very vision when I turned Uber down for an eng mgr position several years ago. I thought it was comical that his pitch was "The reason we're going to be successful at Problem 1 (taxis) is because we're going to be successful at ridiculously-difficult Problem 2 (self-driving) which we're not close to solving". Pass.

Apocryphon 6y ago
Not to mention, a ridiculously difficult problem that can't only be solved by technical breakthroughs, but also relies on legal and social advancements in order to see widespread adoption.
- notyourwork 6y ago
  Ubers not been one to shy away from legal skirmishes though.
  - coddle-hark 6y ago
    Even so, profitable self driving is binary; either there’s a human driver in the car or there isn’t. Uber is ”bold” but not bold enough to put thousands of self-driving cars on the road illegally.
- Fordec 6y ago
  As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers. One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system. Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries) to see how the change in production (ie a new law introduced) had second order effects.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jypepin 6y ago

That's just not true. Way before Uber IPO'ed and started aiming at profitability next year, self-driving cars was the big thing for Uber's future. (Disclaimer, I worked at Uber 2014-18).

necubi 6y ago
I'm not saying there wasn't excitement about AVs. The specific claim I'm disputing (which I've heard over and over again over the past few years) is that either company considered AVs to be the only path to profitability. The history is a bit complicated, because before the IPOs neither company was focused on profitability as a primary goal.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  I agree for Lyft but Uber pretty aggressively pushed the vision as necessary for their future when they were burning so much cash on ATG.
  - jessriedel 6y ago
    They pushed it as necessary for their future because the future will be self-driving and anyone without access to that tech will be out-competed. That's completely different than it being necessary to their future because their present business model cannot be made profitable.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      You contradicted yourself. You said anyone without access to self driving will be out-competed but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary for them. It’s extremely necessary for them. I’d much rather take a driverless Waymo than a ride with a random Uber driver that might be driving distractedly, might get lost, etc. Not to mention the robotaxi should be cheaper at scale as they can operate 24 hours a day.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

ProAm 6y ago

Does profitability equate to paying back all the VC money burned getting to this point? They were losing billions every quarter for a long time. I haven't looked at their quarterlies in a while though but Id be surprised if they were remotely right-side up.

quickthrowman 6y ago
No, it means a profitable quarter.
ksenzee 6y ago
No, because the VC money is equity rather than debt. Profitability doesn't include "make sure the owners get some cash." It just means you made more money than you spent this quarter.
pault 6y ago
Investment rounds aren't loans, they're... Investments. You're selling them a stake in the company, not borrowing money. I'm sure there are exceptions but that's generally how it works.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

What strategies do rideshare companies plan to employ to reach profitability: increasing prices, cutting costs, etc? And what will the implications be for riders and employees alike.

ghaff 6y ago
My assumption would be both. Taxi companies have way lower cost structures. They certainly don't employ lots of software engineers. And there's no reason to think that Uber should be significantly cheaper than a taxi ride. Scale buys you something but probably not a lot. (And scale has some costs too.)
- pishpash 6y ago
  You underestimate what you can extract from making the market larger and more efficient, which taxis could never do. Why don't people barter instead of paying huge sums to Wall Street to intermediate?
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    Bartering in this problem space is hard. Let me call up 5 of my closest friends in my city, to see if they want to leave their home, drive me from Point A to Point B, then go home, right now.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    In part, because, on an individual basis, Wall Street's skim is tiny. It's only big in aggregate.

boston_sre87 6y ago

What is the strategy to get to profitability then? Have only heard of the self driving route before.

jocker12 6y ago

"If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick said." - https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on-self-driving-cars-future-driver-jobs-2016-8?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...