Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

oh of course not -- they are "on a roll" ... ugh.

Never bumped for this but seems appropriate to bump
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

I thought I heard a funny quote from the Uber CEO about throwing away a couple of billion on the autonomous cars but all I can find are rah rah quotes about the spinoff deal.

HA ha

smart money on this is to buy the dip because DOL won't be able to make this happen anyways https://t.co/bvD5A549A9

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) April 29, 2021

Let's hope DOL actually follows through, I won't hold my breath

at the least they're in trouble in the short term because the job market is tight and no one wants these shitty jobs https://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-lyft-expensive-taking-long-driver-shortage-2021-4?op=1

The Prop 22 campaign drew attention to the harsh working conditions and meager wages drivers can face on the job. And for some drivers, it exhausted any goodwill they might have toward the apps, which are now in need of workers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/07/uber-lyft-drivers/

I probably said this upthread somewhere, but I remain baffled by this company whose entire business model is based on underpaying cab drivers and not covering any of their expenses and still can't come remotely close to making a profit when all they actually do is provide an app and skim money off the top. Like if cab companies and car services earn a profit how the fuck do these guys not?

It's like losing money on a protection racket.

part of the answer is that they spend an average of $500,000 per engineer per year (https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Uber,Lyft&track=Software%20Engineer, and you can double those numbers to account for benefits and real estate and organizational overheads), and in uber's case they have an engineering headcount of about 5000. so that's 2.5bn a year on engineering. for an iphone app.

ya i've always been confused about uber's unit economics because of stuff like that

i’ve said it before but my local minicab company has an app and it basically looks like uber’s and it works great. you see the little picture of the car coming towards you and everything. i mean it wouldn’t work in LA but how often am i in LA.

Yes but does your local minicab company have a self driving division

neither does Uber, they sold it

They spend a lot on lobbying too, no?

That's another great thing about my minicab company - lobbying costs are very low.

neither does Uber, they sold it

things seem to be going well here

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/tech/uber-software-bug-drivers-charged/index.html

Fares have been bonkers in Chicago. City cabs, which used to seem expensive, have fares at about half the price.

Same in NY. Easily 5 x what they were pre COVID.

(Cue someone to explain why like we’re all 10 years old…zzzzz)

wow https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/post/659150190242054144/end-of-the-line-for-uber

Might have been mentioned upthread but while Uber et al ultimately can fuck off, one thing I've consistently seen for years in mentions on social media -- predominantly but not solely from Black posters here in America, and very consistently from them, NYC being a key focus but not the sole -- is that, at the least anecdotally but likely more systematically, before the basic innovation of smartphone car service ordering happened calling for a taxi, per said posters, was at best sporadic especially if the calls were from 'bad' neighborhoods, real or imagined. I have no reason to doubt that at all, and essentially by Uber et al becoming huge and forcing the official industries to adapt -- Flywheel, YoTaxi, etc -- that broke that pattern. So the legacy will always have to be nuanced at the least; the collapse in subsidization and more that Doctorow identifies is clear and much of the overall legacy eats, and yet.

That would be a worthy legacy for sure; the post does address it: "It’s true that Uber had upsides, like bringing transport to underserved communities of color — but because Uber was always doomed, this was a temporary mirage that would strand those communities again."

On that front, while I understand his pessimism, I'm also willing to bet that said formal taxi companies are more on the 'uh let's not leave obvious money on the table here' tip now. We'll have to see.

The rideshares may have fucked up by ensuring that the legislature couldn't legislate

Breaking: CA Superior Court judge finds Prop 22 UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!! pic.twitter.com/R4gFoDrs0n

— Veena Dubal (@veenadubal) August 21, 2021

Lmao

Spending $200m to buy a law and having it struck down as unconstitutional bc you tried to make it impossible for the legislature to ever amend it couldn’t have happened to a nicer industry

— Julia Carrie Wong (@juliacarriew) August 21, 2021

The last two times I had to use Uber, my drivers were seething about ways in which the company had actively been ripping them off of late.

This was … maybe 4-5 weeks ago

https://sfstandard.com/technology/san-francisco-birthplace-of-ridehailing-becomes-the-center-of-its-decline/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/08/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-thirty-three-uber-isnt-really-profitable-yet-but-is-getting-closer-the-antitrust-case-against-uber.html

“The third factor, the delinking of passenger fares and driver compensation was a major driver of this labor to capital wealth transfer. Prior to 2022, driver payments were a function of what passengers paid, with adjustments for incentive programs and peak period demand. Uber has developed algorithms for tailoring customer prices based on what they believe individual customers would be willing to pay and tailoring payments to individual drivers so they are as low as possible to get them to accept trips.

This is fundamentally different from Uber’s pre-pandemic price discrimination, where it could apply Surge Pricing during periods of high customer demand (or driver shortages) but any customer in a given zone requesting the same trip at the same time would see the same price, and drivers would receive the same payment for those trips. Now different passengers/drivers making the same trip can see very different fares/payments. System average revenue per trip goes up, average driver payments per trip go down. Airlines have decades of experience changing fares depending on demand but have no ability to discriminate between passengers booking the same flight at the same time. [5]“

Love drunken conversations with drivers. Best part

Apparently on Uber now if you rate a driver less than 5 stars you have to select from a list of reasons why or you can't finalize the tip.

What is/was Hallo?

saw a presentation once about the way different cultures do scoring once, like Italians will tend to give 3/5 to everything as that's the "expectations met" score, and Chinese always will rank everything 5/5 because they just consider it box-ticking with no purpose.

xp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hailo

Italians have very high standards, we’re talking about people who boo subpar opera performances.

why would you rate your driver less than five stars (if you're not italian)? seems pretty dickish. unless they're actually abusive in which case report them.

Not having two license plates on their car. Having extra random people in the car. Lecturing the riders about Jesus or against drugs. Mentioning their MLM. Asking for tips literally or with a sign. Having the passenger seat pulled up all the way/things on the seat so someone can't sit there. Not waiting at the pickup point. Running red lights (any objectively shitty driving).

also it used to be that if you rated a driver one star, you'd never get them again. not that it really matters, that never happened anyway. once that I can remember- and only because he had a manual transmission subaru WRX. not your typical uber car.

I don't get that many ubers but never had any of that, except for stuff on the passenger seat and well it's their car. in general I'd think its just people trying to make a living, why make it harder for them? I wouldn't rate my bus driver or waiter or supermarket till person.

I don't get many ubers -but the last two times the driver took off with acceleration whilst I was still in the process of sitting down in the seat and about to put my seatbelt on. I'd be keen to discourage that.

lol i once had a teenage Uber driver start to pull away while I was still climbing into the car!

the rating system is sort of broken by the understanding that the company is exploiting these drivers so badly. the idea that it could actually be useful feedback that helps customers avoid substandard drivers, and helps those drivers identify improvements they could make to their benefits, is completely swamped by my desire to not add to the misery of someone barely scraping by in an industry/racket created by the company which then has the temerity to ask for my rating.

otm

Chinese always will rank everything 5/5 because they just consider it box-ticking with no purpose.

The Chinese otm.

Dr. Casino, I'd forgotten how you are all over this thread.

If I wasn’t kidnapped, they get five stars.

@ Alfred - ha! This thread's first heyday overlapped with me reading a lot of history/theory of infrastructure and US municipal politics stuff, so I was ready to come in hot with the takes...

grab motorbikes are a miracle, I use them at least twice a day

five stars or no rating at all. no rating means you really fucking sucked but I'm still not trying to fuck with your means of surviving, I don't know what you're going through. it's my understanding that anything less than five stars pushes you lower in the queue of being able to pick up rides, as long as you are giving me a ride you get five stars.