Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Uber Losing $1 Billion a Year In China (thestack.com)

Posted by timothy on from the yuan-way-to-approach-it dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has revealed that the ride-sharing company is writing off $1 billion a year in order to consolidate its place in the Chinese ride-sharing app market. Kalanick said in a speech at the Vancouver Launch Academy that Uber is deeply engaged in a fight for customers in the Chinese market, and that an unnamed competitor is "buying up market share." Uber's main rival in China is Didi Kuaidi, which invested $100 million in Lyft and Ola to last year in a consolidation effort against Uber's incursion into the market — which many believe to have occurred too late into the development of ride-share schemes in China.

4 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. Ride sharing? by smooth+wombat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the development of ride-share schemes in China.

    Isn't ride sharing where one is already going to a specific location and someone asks if they can come along, maybe picking up the cost of tolls for the ride? Or has the definition of ride sharing changed to mean directly contacting someone to have them pick you up at a specific location so you can be driven to a location where the person was not otherwise going and you pay them a fee and maybe give them a tip for their work?

    At least the scheme part is right.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    1. Re:Ride sharing? by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or has the definition of ride sharing changed to mean directly contacting someone to have them pick you up at a specific location so you can be driven to a location where the person was not otherwise going

      Pretty much "ride sharing" in this context means "illegal cab company who decrees they aren't covered by regulations because they have doused themselves in unicorn piss".

      Nothing about Uber is a ride sharing service, it's a bootleg cab company. Their insistence on an alternate reality is bullshit, in all contexts.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  2. Desperation by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uber will have a problem in any market where it is already standard to take advantage of impoverished desperate people. They have just been surviving in North America because they found an untapped resource of desperate 'workers' who have not been taken advantage of yet due to the recent years of poor economy. We're all headed for the conditions that poorer nations are in, really.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  3. Re:So not only are they scumbags, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    No mate, it's not "opinion at best". The word you're looking for is "conjecture." And the fallacy is hilariously wrong, too - you'd do well to look up the difference between "appeal to belief" and "non sequitur."

    That said, cutting rates certainly hit drivers (which have fixed costs that need to be covered *after* Uber takes its cut) while it's conceivable that the increased volume might have been a net positive for Uber itself in terms of cashflow. If that's the case, it certainly makes it easier for them to burn money in China.