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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). T
by 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 agoSo 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 agoThey 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 agoHow 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 agoAbsent 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.
- jeltz 6y agoThey don't. Which is why Ubers cost only slightly less than normal taxis in markets like Sweden where Uber has to follow the same regulations as their competitors. The low prices they have in markets like the US are not sustainable.
- jessaustin 6y agoProp 22 voters think otherwise... but yeah they're delusional.
- argonaut 6y agoTaxi medallions used to cost hundreds of thousands (SF) to more than half a million (NYC). Nowadays they still cost tens of thousands in SF and hundreds of thousands in some areas like NYC. Also, more efficient use of time from app-based routing.
- pmiller2 6y agoI'm not convinced. Do you have evidence that "more efficient use of time from app-based routing" actually results in drivers making more money?
- argonaut 6y agoMedallions alone should be enough to make a difference. The efficient use of time probably has much less of an effect on earnings, if true.
- pmiller2 6y agoI'm also not terribly convinced of this. Medallions are a one-time fixed cost. This should have little to nothing to do with long term prices, especially given that the prices of medallions have gone down significantly.
- twic 6y ago"app-based routing" is a mirage anyway. When you request an Uber ride, your request is advertised to drivers in the area, who can choose to accept it. There is no routing happening. Sure, the driver then drives a route given to them to by the app, but so does everybody else, just in that case, the app is Google Maps. AFAIK, the only routing cleverness is that the end of a shift, drivers can request to only take passengers who are heading in the direction of their own home. That's useful.