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Seems unsurprising. The check had to come due eventually. It’ll be interesting to see whether riders keep using it in enough volume to keep them afloat.
by d23 4y ago
Seems unsurprising. The check had to come due eventually. It’ll be interesting to see whether riders keep using it in enough volume to keep them afloat.
- walrus01 4y agoIt'll be interesting to see in a number of cities where traditional medallion licensed yellow taxis almost entirely disappeared, and the drivers went to go be Uber or Lyft for a period of some years, how much of it reverts back to the traditional system of taxis. I can foresee something like a lot of heavily used 300,000 mile Honda Accords with all city miles on them getting sold cheap. Buyer beware.
- tootie 4y agoThe medallion system was completely broken before the ride apps appeared. Traditional car services were reliable and easy to reach via phone. A lot of them have still survived.
- ghaff 4y agoIt's more expensive but I always use a traditional car service to get to the airport. Super-reliable, comfortable, clean, good drivers. They're always pre-scheduled (which is fine for the airport) but I've never had problems with getting them to make changes when flight stuff happens.
- jeffbee 4y agoWhat are they going to do when they can’t get parts for those Lincolns?
- ghaff 4y agoWhy would it be any different from auto/auto part supply chains in general? (Which, yes, from personal experience are a considerable issue at the moment.)
- jeffbee 4y agoIt's different because they stopped making Lincolns, so the clock is running.
- ghaff 4y agoThere are plenty of other vehicles. Yes, the limo companies liked the unibody limos but there's no shortage of different models they can use. I'm certainly not especially picky in general.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bsder 4y agoEvery "car service" I know of has changed over to some level of electric/hybrid car. The gasoline economics were far too compelling even before this round of gas price gouging.
- walrus01 4y agoIn Vancouver BC where petrol costs have always been considerably higher than the other side of the border in WA, taxis switched almost entirely to Prius as far back as 2004. Even before that it was very common to see CNG modified taxis.
- walrus01 4y agothe same thing all the car services in NYC are doing now with luxury SUVs with leather seats and such? you rarely see an actual town car now.
- tootie 4y agoAside from them spending money on boondoggle after boondoggle, these guys both still have no moat. They had to burn a ton of cash buying up competitors and there's absolutely nothing stopping a third player from entering and eating their lunches. The core premise of hailing taxis via GPS is very simple and very appealing. The could have run these as lean, low-margin businesses and earned a tidy profit forever, but instead they decided to play the valuation game.
- Spooky23 4y agoIt wasn’t about taxis, man, it was changing everything. Listen to the old Ben Thompson podcasts from when Uber was taking over life itself. Private cars, self driving, blah blah blah. Why go to a restaurant when Uber can fly one to you?
- aahortwwy 4y ago> there's absolutely nothing stopping a third player from entering and eating their lunches Any challenger is going to be ten years behind on market and platform development with no access to cheap capital for customer acquisition.