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Uber Launches 'Uber Freight' Website To Prepare the World For Autonomous Delivery Trucks (inverse.com)
Uber has launched a website for a service called Uber Freight. While there are little details about the company's expansion from ride-hailing, Uber Freight is meant to prepare the world for autonomous delivery trucks, according to Inverse. From the report: Uber acquired a startup called Otto, which planned to bring the first self-driving trucks to market, in August. Since then the company has used its trucks to deliver 50,000 cans of beer and hundreds of Christmas trees in San Francisco. This new service won't use those trucks, at least not at the beginning. Instead it will function much like Uber's existing platform: Some people will sign up to drive items across the country, and others will join so they can send packages without having to sign a contract with established shipping companies. The service will likely bring "surge pricing" to trucking, too. Uber Freight could also help Otto's trucks by using data gathered from drivers on the platform. This would allow the self-driving vehicles to learn from experienced people while regulators figure out how to govern autonomous trucks and the technology catches up to all of the promises made by its creators. Uber Freight's launch coincides with growing interest in trucking from many tech companies. Nikola Motor Company wants to use tech to make trucking more environmentally friendly and appealing to millennials; Tesla's working on self-driving trucks; the list could go on. Uber told Inverse it's going to wait until the new year to elaborate on how the system works. "We don't have any new information to share at the moment," a spokesperson said, "but hope to in the new year so please do stay in touch." It looks like the future of trucking -- or at least one potential future -- is going to take a little while longer to make its debut.
That's a pretty dim view. Perhaps you can say that people buying their stock on public markets are stupid rubes buying into hype, but before Uber was public, what was the compelling pitch to private investors that got them a $40b valuation in 2014?
Yes, yes, I know this is slashdot, so stupid VCs and dumb billionaires, etc etc. But let's get real. These firms ran numbers to get to $40b, and you think that pitch was competing with taxis, Lyft, and others?
You don't tell investors you're going to lose money for years without a pitch for an utterly transformative business plan. That's not: cheaper taxi! No, Uber was one of the first people publicly talking about autonomous vehicles being the next step. I remember, because it got them a ton of shit from Uber haters, who used the news to beat up on uber drivers. "Uber is telling you that you're a temporary inconvenience and they will get rid of drivers as soon as they can."
They bought Otto... out of desperation? Really? Doesn't it seem more likely that it is 100% in line with a transformative transportation story they've had from the beginning?
You know another hyped up story that lost money for years and years and years (and I think still is)? Amazon. Online bookstore. Then, f it, let's sell everything. We have some spare capacity in our servers, so let's rent that out too. How we shop is completely different now vs 10 years ago, and Amazon owns that. How we do infrastructure is completely different from what we did 5 years ago, and AWS owns that.
I think Uber saw an equally silly misuse of resources in transportation. You buy a $20k car so you can drive it for 90 mins a day, and the other 22.5 hours it is unused capacity. Trucking is massive, extremely complex, is very sensitive to efficiency and speed of delivery, and has some serious limitations from human drivers (so much so that laws had to be passed to force drivers to rest).
Now, almost no business sets a course and then powers straight ahead. It's fluid and involves reactions to market signals. But I think the narrative that Uber is lost and grasping at straws is really hard to swallow. No way do they get a $40b valuation in private funding rounds with a story limited to attacking taxis.