Uber 'to focus on bikes over cars' | Hacker News Reader

Uber 'to focus on bikes over cars'

bbc.co.uk

25 pointspmoriarty22 comments

It's interesting how BBC still calls Uber a ride-sharing company. Especially as it now will focus on bikes. Ride-sharing a bike.. I'd rather not.

Uber Tandem?

Uber Backpeg.

Uber Frontpeg for a 20% discount.

Uber Rickshaw for a classy ride.

> Uber Rickshaw for a classy ride.

Kramer was ahead of his time.

Uber bike pool https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTCnkWf...

It would be more efficient to have a city full of professional bike riders on 2-person bikes or pedal-rickshaws - or normal bikes with bike pegs[0]. One issue with the proliferation of Lime bikes is the increasing number of people with little experience riding bikes in cities, and poor understanding of the rules of bikes on roads and sidewalks.

[0]https://www.livestrong.com/article/398587-bike-pegs/

More efficient in what way? Bikes are pretty small and cheap already.

More efficient for the cars being driven on the streets, or waiting at stop lights, often burning gasoline - blocked by a slower carbon-neutral transportation solution.

Greater cycling actually reduces traffic and wait times for drivers. Combined with the CO2, toxic exhaust, and other negative externalities, as well as the positive health effects of cycling, it makes sense to discourage driving and encourage cycling. At any rate, bikes are usually faster than cars in dense city environments, especially when you take parking into account.

Also, wouldn't large rickshaws be slower than normal bikes?

Electric auto-rickshaws. Pretty much everywhere in many cities in china where regulation bans petrol powered versions (usually two stroke and dirty as). Pedal rickshaws, mostly those without electric boost, have too much load for a single peddler.

Most of the reality-based world calls them a "transportation network service". That's the phrase to google if you want to find, e.g., various city and state information about regulation, etc.

China already tried this and this is the outcome: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/25/chinas-bike-... US cities are predominantly designed around cars. More so than China. Don't see how Uber can succeed with this initiative.

This must be because investors forced them to back away from self driving, and without that cars will never be particularly profitable for them.

Their valuation is not going to stay this high...

Ya... The bicycle market is way smaller than vehicles at least in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if less than 10%. And you can't even charge as much. You expect a bike to be the nearly the cheapest option, right after walking.

Oddly, Toyota has committed $500B to a partnership with Uber on self driving cars.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17853248

Ok now I'm just confused.

>Uber says it plans to focus more on its electric scooter and bike business, and less on cars, despite the fact it could hurt profits.

I would have written that as "could increase losses" ...

> It also teamed up with Lime, an electric scooter company, while forging deals in other areas such as public transit and freight.

This seems like part of a larger move to take the notorious Uber brand out of the marketing equation, while continuing to pivot around the larger problem of logistics in cities.

He also acknowledged that Uber drivers could lose out from the plan, but said over the longer term drivers would benefit

These were the same drivers Uber was planning to replace with self driving cars! The well-being of its driving employees is literally Uber’s lowest priority

Holy shit. I actually like Uber now. Crazy.

Good for you. For my part, I just stopped liking Toyota.

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