I agree, but investors don't want to break even. The fundamental tension here is high operating margins -- 60% not being uncommon operating margins for a software company -- are incompatible with a highly competitive industry. But it's those fat margins that justify massive R&D investment. Although software companies have enormous operating margins, they generally are not more profitable, because of huge fixed investment.
That creates a bit of a puzzle for industries with very thin operating margins that want to make significant investments in R&D. Generally they don't do it. That is why innovation at the Grocery store or in Long Haul trucking is so slow. From an engineering point of view, they are ripe for disruption, until you bring in an accountant to tell you that the disruption doesn't pencil out. Uber, like everything else, said to hell with it we're going ahead anyway. So how can they make things pencil out?
One option is to raise unit revenue in the future, which in an industry that's currently competitive means driving out the competition. IMO Uber was originally targeting this. But it turns out -- and really anyone could have told you -- that what Uber is doing isn't technically difficult. The heavy lifting is smartphones, GPS and Maps, whose availability made Uber/Lyft possible. Uber doesn't own any of the key technologies that make Uber possible, nor do they have a track record of being able to tackle really hard technology problems. They've had huge problems scaling and when Uber started using its own maps, it was a disaster. Bad maps is the #1 problem with Uber. Lots of new competitors have sprung up already that give basically an equivalent user experience, so Uber is not going to get real pricing power.
The next option would be "Lower unit costs in the future", But so far, that means spinning tales about self-driving cars, which is way beyond their technical ability as well as decades out even for those that have the chops to pull it off. IMO this only works because the latter round investors are naive about technology and the current investment climate is conducive to reaching for yield.
So while it's perfectly possible for Uber to continue existing as a concern, I don't think it's possible to satisfy their investors, and this means, unfortunately, that Uber may not make it. Many companies engage in a lot of self-destructive acts to meet unrealistic profit or growth goals set by investors, but in this case, Uber has only themselves to blame for setting these expectations. This is a shame, because I prefer Uber to Lyft and think they've created enormous value for both riders and drivers.