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Comment by jbob2000 | Hacker News Reader

jbob2000

I smell a buyout or merger coming. They can't take on Uber individually.

Don't we think transportation is big enough that both Uber and Lyft can coexist "peacefully"?

Especially with Uber experimenting into non-ride services on top of their infrastructure, like food delivery, etc.

Maybe I haven't followed closely enough, but my understanding is that Lyft is still really focused on just making a good, friendly, affordable ride option.

Happened to me last week in San Francisco; an Uber driver accepted a Lyft pickup, as I was still in the car for my Uber ride..

How does that work? How did the Uber driver get a hold of the Lyft costumer?

I assume he was also a Lyft driver and was accepting rides on both apps.

Ah, makes sense.

yep, exactly

Especially given that most drivers I've seen use both the apps, and other operating costs are pretty slim.

It's the worldwide presence where Uber had the massive advantage. If Didi/Ola/Lyft/Others decide to merge/parter only than will they stand a chance.

customer acquisition costs are high, and driver acquisition costs are very high.

At least, as long as drivers are human [0]. ;p

0: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/27/how-ubers-autono...

If one eventual use for these services is as a smart-routed bus of sorts, why can't one of the companies tackling Uber jump straight to that? Or at least make a serious experiment of it?

A number have tried, and failed. Interestingly, the following three failed as a function of being based in transit-legislation-heavy San Francisco:

* Loup

* Leap

* Night School

My understanding is that Chariot is still operating and doing well, though.

All of them "failed" for legal reasons, not because there weren't making enough money, with enough funding legal reasons also vanish..

That's basically Lyft Line[1], which offers fixed price $5 (at least in Manhattan[2], not sure about other markets) smart routed shared taxis. Seems like buses would just be a matter of improving routing further and scaling each vehicle up.

[1] https://www.lyft.com/line

[2] http://blog.lyft.com/posts/highfivenyc

Yeah, you can imagine it as a continuum: as you go from left to right, you have lower convenience (how far out of your route or schedule it takes you), longer trips, and lower costs, and vice versa.

On the left end would be a private, dedicated chauffer. (Or private helicopter for extreme left!) On the right end would be public transit or walking.

Putting transit options on the continuum would look like:

Private Chauffer -- Personal Car -- Taxi -- Livery/Lyft/Uber -- Lyft Line/UberPool -- Lyft Line + Hotspots -- <potential new bus-like offerings> -- public transit -- walking

My earlier comment on the continuum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10122701

That's an elegant way to think about it.

Perhaps one slight deviation in Lyft Line is is when other people being picked up by your car are running late [0].

0: Personal experience in SF in October.

> Perhaps one slight deviation in Lyft Line is is when other people being picked up by your car are running late [0].

FYI, the Lyft driver is supposed to wait no longer than one minute. If they wait longer than that, you can prod them to move on (or mention that in their review).

I spent this summer in SF and took a Lyft Line home every day. This was only an issue once, and the driver left after ~1 minute, so it didn't actually delay my ride at all.

I'm not sure what you mean; that's consistent with the continuum. It's less convenient (more stops not on your route) and takes longer than regular Lyft, and in return it costs less.

I thought of the abrupt stop as a deviation in convenience / increase in time (out of your control) that doesn't happen on public transit.

Right, but public transit also doesn't (generally) go directly to your pickup spot or destination, and likewise has to make a significantly greater number of stops that don't have to do with your route. Similarly, they can be held up by passengers.

The point is, in general, public transit routes are farther from your ideal route and schedule. Taxis and regular Uber/Lyft go direct, while Lyft Lines are in between, requiring some compromise on route and schedule (waiting for a match).

True. If you decide to do a longer post about the transit continuum, I'd love to see it.

I've built a similar continuum for all of the taquerias in my neighborhood considering price and quality.

The point of Uber isn't to fix transportation, it's to feed Travis Kalanick's god complex. So, no, they won't be able to co-exist peacefully.

What evidence do you have to support this? What personal knowledge to do you have to support this? What accompanying expertise do you have to support this?

It's odd to me that people with (assumingly) no knowledge on the matter feel they can aptly deduce complex situations into one sound bite of a sentence.

The fact that the company is called Uber, which is an obvious reference to Nietzsche's idea of the Ubermensch. The fact that Kalanick has said, publicly, that the point of starting the company was to enable his already-rich friends to "be baller" in San Francisco. The fact that he had Uber build a thing called "God Mode" into their software so that he could watch famous people come and go on the service and occasionally put that enormous power on display to other powerful people.

He's a raging, power-hungry narcissistic sociopath, in public, all the time. This isn't guess work. The parent of my original post is suggesting that Uber exists for reasons other than the ones Kalanick has given in public, and that's just silly.

I can appreciate a point about someone violating privacy by building that particular feature, but your comment is so caustic and accusatory it's just noise, not a valid addition to a legitimate debate.

You cannot call someone a "raging, power-hungry narcissistic sociopath" or accuse him of having a "god complex" for 1. wanting to build a successful company catering to rich people or 2. naming a company after a Nietzschian ideal. Does NASA have a god complex because they used the name Apollo?

Your points about Travis do not seem to be informed by reason or experience with the man. In fact, it just seems as though you're emotionally invested to the point of complete and utter bias.

You can certainly take away a different interpretation of the evidence than I do, but to me the gestalt of the man's public persona and actions add up to a picture of a person entirely driven by a desire for power, not some narrow notion of "improving transportation".

That you don't see the same thing demonstrates your own bias to give certain people and behaviors more room for doubt. Which is fine, as long as you recognize it's still a bias. We are the same kind of meat-machine, with the same bugs. Don't try to act like you're above it.

I have yet to see any 'evidence', or personal insight. Yet you seem to think you understand a man, whom you've never met nor interacted with, and his deep personal motivations. Based upon his 'public persona'. You don't see anything odd about that?

No, I don't. His public persona is what he is choosing to project to the world. It amounts to the things he wants us to know about him. And more importantly, one is what one does, not what one intends.

"One is what one does, not intends"

I couldn't agree more. Travis (and the team) has created $51bn of market value, provided cheaper and more efficient transportation to tens of millions of people in hundreds of cities all around the world. He's fought, and defeated, corruption of city officials in many locations all around the world. Uber has and will have a massive positive impact on tens/hundreds/thousands of millions of people in the world (with the self driving vehicle). How he's portrayed in the media is largely irrelevant, to me at least.

Oh, readers of HN, you credulous fools.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that just because people disagree with your unfounded claim of the supposed "god-complex", it means they believe Kalanick is just trying to a public service. Your post paints a false dichotomy.

I personally think they're just trying to make a lot of money.

Agree. The best case for Lyft is that they enable a major international player (Didi, Ola etc) to enter the US market. Similar to what UrbanSpoon did for Zomato (vs Yelp).

I don't think so. I think they're much better off focusing the product on one specific market. The partnership would let people use the basic service and if they wanted to use market specific feature like Lyft Line or Ola Food, they would have to download the app for that local market.

I disagree. If Lyft goes too deep into a specific market, then they risk Uber using their dominance in another market to push them out of this one. They need to compete on all fronts to keep Uber away from their cash cow.

Can you please explain that? How can Uber's strength in other regions impact performance in a specific one?

Consumers in the app-hire/ride-share market aren't stuck to one market; Someone who uses Lyft-Line may also use UberX. If Uber release "Uber-Line", and Lyft doesn't have a comparable "LyftX", then there's no reason to use Lyft anymore. Everything you need is in Uber.

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