I just moved from an Uber-only market (Philadelphia) to an Uber and Lyft market (SF) and it was immediately clear to me that these two companies are at war. Ub

I just moved from an Uber-only market (Philadelphia) to an Uber and Lyft market (SF) and it was immediately clear to me that these two companies are at war. UberX offers 25% off this summer, Lyft offers 30% off. Lyft announces Lyft Line, Uber beats them to the punch with Uber Pool. The drivers tell me that either company will give you $$$ to switch and that drivers are coveted. Every feature that one gets, the other will imitate. As a consumer it seems that there is basically no difference between the two services, I take whichever has less surge at the moment and/or whichever my friends want to take. It seems like this price war has served to totally commoditize ride sharing; I don't know anyone who has a serious preference between UberX and Lyft (black car and SUV are another story). Do they really think they can squeeze the life out of each other like this? I feel like VCs will just keep pumping money into them and fueling the price war. It seems to me that instead one should focus on really differentiating the service in some way to reverse the commoditization of private, on-demand rides. They either need to make their service preferable in some way to consumers (like Dropbox has done for file sharing) or make it a no-brainer choice for drivers to exclusively drive with them. Not that I'm complaining, this war basically just serves to make private transportation cheaper for consumers like me.