Uber's business model is a total failure. Hubert Horan has done an amazing job exposing it [1] and you can also listen to his interview [2].
I'll leave it up to you to conclude whether or not trading $0.60 for a $1 can last forever.
If they raise the prices, does the market go away?
If they are able to outlast and go to self-driving cars, how profitable is that business when factoring in competition, possible regulation, or it even becoming a public utility?
Side note: big companies generally die because they don’t take a real threat seriously, and by the time they do, it’s too late.
It needs to be less expensive than a taxi to generate a lot of demand, but this seems to be a pretty low bar.
Uber made total sense in big cities when minimums were $15, the average ride was $40+, and all cars were staffed by professional drivers looking for extra income and hours between clients. It was win-win, complied with the law and really didn’t even have that big of an impact on the taxi industry because it wasn’t a race to the bottom.
None of these services make any sense with $7 rides and random people with a drivers license trying to make a living off of driving all day long.