Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

their problem is they are hemorrhaging money to get to a defendable business model (fleets of self-driving cars) and in the meantime they have an undefendable commodity business model with a razor thin profit margin (or possibly loss), that keeps losing chunks to competitors (e.g. NYC) and failing expensively in new markets (e.g. china)

One thing I don't understand -- right now Uber supposedly benefits from not owning its vehicles, shifting the burden onto the driver. When it moves to self-driving cars, won't it have to own them?

I mean not only the cars, but it will probably need some kind of warehousing and servicing facilities - can't just run the cars 24/7 and never repair or park them. While labor costs will be lower, other overhead and fixed costs will presumably be much higher, no? Just seems like a weird trajectory.

maybe!

A lot of corporations get around owning real estate by having what's a nearly permanent lease with the build-to-purpose contractor who built the building. So instead of building and owning a building, you work with a property management and construction conglomerate to build exactly what you want, but you're technically leasing.

Uber could pretty easily do the same by either contracting with an existing company that does fleet management services, or start their own fleet management company that is separate from the main corporation.

It's kind of like how Apple doesn't own any hardware manufacturing plants, but they strongly subsidize and develop equipment for their contractors to use. Owning real estate and factories that could go dormant for periods of time is less of an asset than liability.

There's also the matter of what happens when cars get rotated out -- do they resell them on the private market? If so, why not just contract with one of the huge car rental chains out there that already does fleet management -- the larger Enterprise or Hertz franchises are already set up for car washing/vacuuming, inspection, and sale after a certain number of miles/years accumulates. All this would do is remove all the paperwork for car rental and figure out the logistics of when the car is returning.

Watching this little black car on the map slowly make his way here in 20 mins despite being a couple miles away

https://twitter.com/kurtopsahl/status/802764934736015360

"Heads up @uber users. The 11/23 update (version 3.222.4) removes the "While using" location privacy setting, now only Always or Never."

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unicorns-new-clothes/

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-one-understanding-ubers-bleak-operating-economics.html

Uber has to subsidize its operations to the tune of a couple billion a year even after nerfing its drivers' rates. From the FT blog behind the firewall:

We recently spoke to one of Uber’s earliest London drivers, who declined to be named. He told us that to survive he had to forge a driver syndicate which collectively owns the underlying car capital. With more drivers than cars to hand, the cars can be fully utilised 24 hours a day improving the return on capital invested. To economise further, the drivers take turns with shifts, step-in for each other if and when they need leave and recruit temporary staff if and when they find themselves under staffed. They also mutualise the costs and the insurance. Yet, even then, he said “it’s really hard to make the economics work” and that “when Uber increased its margin from 20 per cent to 28 per cent it knocked our profitability in half”.

What this amounts to, of course, is the re-constitution of the very economies of scale which Uber inadvertently demolished when it went about its atomising driver process. But if a quasi professional corporate structure like this can’t make ends meet within the Uber network, what hope does any single driver have? Uber is surviving on plain old worker naivety.

so these guys created an ad hoc taxi company to drive for uber semi-profitably and then the bottom dropped

amazing

There is no evidence that Uber’s rapid growth is driving the rapid margin improvements achieved by other prominent tech startups as they “grew into profitability.”

is this really happening for that many? that theyve become profitable i mean

yeah but government is communism

I've been saying for a while now that the economics of Uber can't possibly make sense long term, it's clear from what I hear from drivers about how little they actually make even as Uber fails to turn a profit. The only logical explanation is that they're just trying to string things along on the backs of drivers until they can go full driverless. And even that I have my doubts about profitability.

Their window to price out and decimate the regulated cab industry seems like it's probably passed.

how will silicon valley utopians travel through meatspace now

uber but for uber

a local uber driver tried to scam my friend over the weekend

he gets into the car, and the driver says that surge pricing kicked in. driver shows his own phone, displaying a fake uber app showing some ridiculous fare on it. driver says, hey, cancel your ride request, and I'll just take cash instead and not charge you this surge price.

i'm not sure what to think on this one

seems like he's mostly scamming uber

based on convos w/three separate Lyft drivers (who had both Uber and Lyft stickers on their cars), they all prefer driving for Lyft and get a bigger cut (80% vs 70%) of their fares, one said Lyft had at least some training....

also, they all three said they will take a Lyft fare over a Uber fare if they are getting multiple calls at once (like bar time, etc)

I really hate the ubiquity of Uber - people get cars for me when I work (flying to & from places, hotel to airport etc) and over the past couple of years it's now always "I'll get you an Uber" every single time followed by me saying "please just a cab" but it's an uphill battle, people are pretty into Uber. worse problems to have I know but like...I don't wanna ride in yr Uber

lol agreed. People are so easily like "Call me an Uber" like the nounification was so fast. It's gross to me.

so weird for other services to seem like off-brands when uber is, outside of the logo and app, so brandless. any random car could be your ride!

some people get quite defensive if you reveal you don't love uber and don't relish the opportunity to use it

lyft is pretty big, i use it as my generic noun for app-hailed ride, no one bats an eye

i see what you (and they) did there

https://twitter.com/kurtopsahl/status/802764934736015360

"Heads up @uber users. The 11/23 update (version 3.222.4) removes the "While using" location privacy setting, now only Always or Never."

― Elvis Telecom, Sunday, November 27, 2016 6:19 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there are companies i would trust to do this but with its history of sociopathic libertarianism in upper management uber is not one of them. uninstalled.

does the app just not work if you choose "never" or can you manually enter your location?

If your company prefers uber rather than a traditional taxi cab, it's portable because ubers are usually cheaper

I used to use uber a lot and it was pretty obvious some were a "collective", because they use the same phone numbers

Wouldn't be surprised if lyft does the same as uber as they grow

Also I've bargained with the uber driver and paid him cash before. Worked great for me and I'm sure it wasn't the first time this dude has done it

Probably*

Autocorrect

Don't you lose $5 if you cancel a ride after the driver shows?

From my understanding it's up to the driver. I believe s/he has to cancel it though

I've done it about 10 times and have never been charged and I usually call them unless i requested it within a few minutes

Can I just support a driver collective through Patreon

just start dating someone who is underemployed and owns a car

If your company prefers uber rather than a traditional taxi cab, it's portable because ubers are usually cheaper

I used to use uber a lot and it was pretty obvious some were a "collective", because they use the same phone numbers

Wouldn't be surprised if lyft does the same as uber as they grow

Also I've bargained with the uber driver and paid him cash before. Worked great for me and I'm sure it wasn't the first time this dude has done it

― F♯ A♯ (∞), Monday, December 5, 2016 1:55 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in fairness, when i first heard of uber a long time ago i used it for a whole weeklong trip and the expense reporting and charging directly to the company card was way easier and faster that a mitful of yellow taxi cards i would have to try to fill in from memory after the fact

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-forum-idUSKBN1431KU

Exciting new shitbags:

"Uber blames humans for self-driving car traffic offenses as California orders a halt.
Transit regulators ordered the company to take vehicles off the roads on first day they were launched without permits in Uber’s home town of San Francisco."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/uber-self-driving-cars-run-red-lights-san-francisco

delete uber https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber

(this happens elsewhere too, but delete uber)

the writer is a speaker at that conference I'm going to in april

That is a lot of writing, so i just skimmed it

Anyway, sounds horrible, but a couple things

This unfortunately sounds like normal hr practice to me. They're there to protect upper management, especially one who is well connected and is a high performer, unless there is no way they can defend them

Also, i closes my uber account a while ago because i happen to know someone who used to work there and said they were treating the drivers unfairly. He switched to lyft, and it's a lot better, so now that's what i use

yeah it sounded like this dude wasn't near upper management and no, HR in any competent place isn't going to do some shell game bullshit when it's obvious coworkers are going to talk and realize a "first incident" is anything but

any org of decent size is going to do something to place both people somewhere else

Ah ya you're right he's not even part of management

Right, hr would do something in this case

When someone in management is involved, I've been at 3k+ employee companies where they give both parties options instead of hr actually coming in and taking care of it

(Happened at two places i worked at)

where does "management" begin? he was her manager

Upper mgmt

I mean, I work at a large place and iirc (reorgs make me forgetful) it's like me->manager>manager>department head>org unit head>vp

Sorry I'm eating while posting

In the case of my workplaces, this wasn't just middle mgmt, and there were groups of sr mgrs

well tell em to stop trying to fuck the underlings

All the places I've worked, I'm fairly confident someone'd be fired after even one sexual harassment complaint. Ive seen people fired for less (sending a racist email, swearing at a colleague over skype) so I'd fully expect my current HR at the least to act on someone with *multiple* complaints.

The fact they straight up lied to each complainant that this was his first offence is... just horrifying.

but yes, also, HR are there to protect the company, not the workers, sadly this is so.

it's allocating humans as resources, not resources for humans

https://twitter.com/cjc/status/833504902445821952

imagine if this article were written by a driver