If people are perplexed by uber today it's because the unit economics look horrible, and it doesn't seem like they will improve without a major technological advance.

Edit: TBF, I was curious so I checked out AMZN's first year of trading: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/AMZN/history?period1=8528832...

They dropped 20% on day one. I don't think that reflects investor skepticism re: shopping online, but skepticism re: the myriad risks they faced as one of many money losing online retailers.

Edit: negative marginal costs -> negative marginal profits.

Public transport is barely used in the USA perhaps but that's not the only market Uber needs to compete in to succeed.

And this isn't taking into account Uber's many run-ins with local authorities, which are dragging on , costing money and have the possibility to shut them out of some markets.

From what I understand Uber's main answer to this is "autonomous taxis" but to me that's a long way from being a viable business model.

In one of Uber's largest markets, NYC, public transport is extensively used, and I assume that many price-sensitive Uber users will go back to taking the subway or bus if Uber raises its fares too much.

Uber essentially sets money on fire in order to make the rides cheaper than alternatives, but that will eventually end. I've got some bad news for you about what happens to prices when that occurs.

Of course that is the ultimate goal of Uber, and all ride sharing systems: to destroy any and all local public transit and competitors, no matter the cost, by setting obscene amounts of money on fire and then, when it's all said and done, they get to be the only name in town and price however high they want.

(Side note, but it's going to be legitimately hilarious when Uber re-introduces the concept of "buses" and tech nerds here drop their jaws in disbelief at how amazing it is.)

> Public transport is barely used.

I've got some bad news about places outside of the US (and even many places inside the US).

> Uber is providing a subsidized public service while employing a lot of people.

No they don't; they actually do not do either of those things. Uber isn't a "public service", by definition, that is, unless words simply don't mean anything anymore. It's a business designed to make money; the fact that you confuse these two proves Uber's marketing is working on you, not that it's actually true in any meaningful way.

They also don't actually "employ" any of their drivers, the largest part of their "work force", and they have argued that position in court as well in order to avoid paying benefits, etc for their drivers. And of course, their inevitable goal is to just move to autonomous cars as far as possible, meaning those "employees" (who aren't actually legally defined as such) will eventually get kicked out of the whole system, if they can get there. Of course, once that happens, the tune will go from "uber employs a lot of people, and therefore they're good" to "why did you ever expect uber would keep employing you? just get another job" over night, without a hint of self-reflection at all.

For street hail, the cost is higher because the government sets regulation about the equipment (eg compulsory CCTV, meters etc).

The net result is that the cost of an Uber ride is almost identical to a street hire, identical to using one of the other apps that are around (13 cabs, Ola etc).

Uber has a name/brand advantage, but it has lost the cost advantage over the old taxi model and it has lost the app advantage as the app is easily replaceable.

Many drivers operate on more than one app and street hail cabs (the "original" taxis) operate on both.

Uber's business model for their core business is unsustainable, the margins and operating costs are identical to other operators, there is no advantage of scale.