Uber ultimately will have enormous leverage to submarine any meaningful competition and even to displace public transit. Their national scope will make them a force to be reckoned with.
"The theory of disruptive innovation was invented by Clayton Christensen, of Harvard Business School, in his book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Mr Christensen used the term to describe innovations that create new markets by discovering new categories of customers. They do this partly by harnessing new technologies but also by developing new business models and exploiting old technologies in new ways. He contrasted disruptive innovation with sustaining innovation, which simply improves existing products. Personal computers, for example, were disruptive innovations because they created a new mass market for computers; previously, expensive mainframe computers had been sold only to big companies and research universities."
[0] - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/funding-rounds [1] - http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/31/news/economy/nyc-subway-cons...
I'd arguing that Uber has the potential to pose a disruptive threat to taxis, not subways. And to lots of transportation systems in plenty of other cities around the world.
This ultimately results in less feeder traffic for the subway, higher subsidy requirements and is overall a bad thing for the system.
Über's valuation is all about the market clout they are building. The fantasies of robot cabs are just a veneer.
Uber decided to hold off entering Spain, which let a bunch of similar services (Cabify, Hailo, MyTaxi) operate in that market. Same in Denmark - almost every cab passing by advertises a URL for their specific app.
Why do I need to trust Uber for reputation management? Is there really any other piece of Uber that couldn't be replicated overnight by a knowledgeable enough team?
Is that really true? More people might ride cabs if the experience was less annoying.