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'Uber Is Doomed', Argues Transportation Reporter (jalopnik.com)
When an Uber self-driving car ran a red light last year, they blamed and suspended the car's driver, even though it was the car's software that malfunctioned, according to two former employees, ultimately causing Uber cars to run six different red lights. But technical issues may be only the beginning. An anonymous reader writes:
Jalopnik points out that in 2016 Uber "burned through more than $2 billion, amid findings that rider fares only cover roughly 40% of a ride, with the remainder subsidized by venture capitalists" (covering even less than the fares of government-subsidized mass transit systems). So despite Google's lawsuit and other recent bad publicity, "even when those factors are removed, it's becoming more evident that Uber will collapse on its own."
Their long analysis argues that the problems are already becoming apparent. "Uber, which didn't respond to questions from Jalopnik about its viability, recently paid $20 million to settle claims that it grossly misled how much drivers could earn on Craigslist ads. The company's explosive growth also fundamentally required it to begin offering subprime auto loans to prospective drivers without a vehicle."
Last month transportation industry analyst Hubert Horan calculated that Uber Global's losses have been "substantially greater than any venture capital-funded startup in history."
Their long analysis argues that the problems are already becoming apparent. "Uber, which didn't respond to questions from Jalopnik about its viability, recently paid $20 million to settle claims that it grossly misled how much drivers could earn on Craigslist ads. The company's explosive growth also fundamentally required it to begin offering subprime auto loans to prospective drivers without a vehicle."
Last month transportation industry analyst Hubert Horan calculated that Uber Global's losses have been "substantially greater than any venture capital-funded startup in history."
Few companies rival the dishonesty, misogyny and downright shadiness of Uber. The quicker they are gone and a better company can fill their shoe (Lyft perhaps?), the better.
Nothing of value will be lost.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
Uber is a taxi company, it made a name and got support by creating jobs and employing people. Their push to automatic cars destroys the very thing that made them popular to begin with. Uber isn't a car manufacturer, and not an automotive tech company. Any beating they get is well deserved at this point, because they put social engineering above society. The CEO should, but of course won't, be thrown out on their behind.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Who'd have thunk it?
Uber's not special. If you want to open a lemonade stand you're free to do so. The second you start feeding people en masse then society has a right to make sure your kitchen is clean and you aren't accidentally poisoning people. They're transporting people in bulk, that means some oversight from a public safety perspective is warranted and that means everything that goes along with the rest of the economy including not lying to people about income.
The sharing economy will change things, but only so far. Is the medallion system we've used up until now for taxies ripe for reform? Sure! Why not have a sanity check to bring it into the 21st century. However, pretending the rest of the world, including vehicle inspections, truth in advertising laws and the like do not exist is not the sharing economy, it's being a dumbass.
Like Napster, this may only evolve into a different set of problems.
We'll see if taxis survive self-driving cars.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
If I were running Uber, I would have had it concentrate on an assortment of US cities that are friendly to open-market taxi service, rather than blowing its budget fighting City Hall in every monopoly city in the world. By being profitable and having the capital to treat its drivers well in the short term while getting ready for self-driving cars in the long term, it would eventually expand into monopoly cities because the customers would demand it.
Problem is that, unlike Amazon, which has huge barriers to entry (those warehouses cost money, and so do the schmoes who schlep the stock around inside), anyone can create a web app and let people post that they're looking to "share a ride from point A to point B". The drivers bear all the capital and running costs, as well as the legal risk.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Uber's venture capitalists and investors are eventually going to get skittish.
Which is why there was such a rush to try and IPO it over the past few years. That way the founders and investors could get out with their cash and Wall St. (read - your 401(k)) would be left holding the bag. After all, the Fed is pumping so much printed money into the system something has to soak up all that extra cash. Nowadays it's IPO's. But god help us when the bottom drops out of the market NEXT time...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Uber is paying a huge cost to corner the market while it is till a new and opening market. But all of these costs are voluntary and could be given up in a day.
At the end the of the day, Uber is a very simple software company that could operate on a shoe string budget of half a dozen employees and a few servers.
But the investors are obviously willing to spend billions building an iron grip on a transportation monopoly.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Sure but my Uber account works in 20+ countries worldwide, I don't have to sign up for the local transit whatever. That's a huge plus. Not only that but sales people use uber religiously as they don't even need to expense their uber travel, they just charge it to the company card, that's a massive, massive boost. Uber and AirBnB are the largest business expenses in total number of line items for many companies these days. You can't auto-expense every single local transit app automatically, with uber comes that convenience. As someone traveling in Hawaii, California, Texas, London and Hungary it's really nice to be able to just open the app, plug in the location, and have someone drive you there without having to worry about the local currency, working out how to sign up for the service in Hungarian or Maltese or whatever. Step off the plane and GO. I don't care if it's 5% more, for the three days I'm going to be there, the cost difference just doesn't matter.
moox. for a new generation.
Amazon wasn't profitable as a whole because it kept plowing money from its profitable departments into expanding into new markets. Amazon's most profitable division right now is AWS. AWS is a scalable business where cost don't scale linearly with the number of customers. Uber is not profitable because it is subsidizing each ride. Uber doesn't gain the benefits of scale using its current business model.
Yes, they had a damned good product idea.
Then they ABANDONED that idea in favor of seeing just how much shit they could get away with before the collective governments of the planet came down on them like a bag of bricks.
Seriously, it's been years since you could call Uber "ride-sharing" with a straight face.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
If they're still burning through money after all that then there is something seriously fucked up with their product idea and their business model. I won't miss them if they go under. More likely they'll try to do an IPO and pass the buck onto some other saps. The founds and 1st round of investors will take the money and run.
The problem for Uber is that there's absolutely nothing stopping the taxi companies adopting all of these. Many will already do fixed-price trips. If you have a corporate account, they'll happily just bill the company rather than the rider. An open protocol for interfacing with their dispatcher system and allowing them to provide locations of taxis that could be dispatched and quotes would let a federated system work. Some individual taxi companies already have apps that let you provide GPS start and endpoints.
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