Agreed, now that they've created a constant supply of drivers and riders, it's much easier to solve the chicken and egg problem by piggybacking on that supply. For a while now, I've been thinking that someone should create a simple smartphone dispatch service that operates as a service to drivers, just takes a very small fixed cut, and allows them to put out ask prices, while riders put out bids. Then, this thing matchmakes and hands the rider off. The experience would likely be more variable/less controlled, but it also seems more likely to be economically sustainable, and give some freedom back to the drivers.
I asked that HN few months ago and was told its a bad idea. I was explained that people want to find a ride quickly and riders only care about stable inflow of riders. I still believe an app that both parties can agree on price (uber for ebay) would be a great third competitor in taxi-riding world.
I think a lot of that assumes that people only use yours, and that price isn’t a significant factor for riders. But I think in a lot of areas they’re still subsidizing riders, and once they jack it up to the true cost everywhere, people will start caring a lot more about the price. In SF I’ve noticed that they’ve bumped the price of express pools up by ~50% since IPO, and it’s gone from a no brainer to not such a no-brainer. If there was a significantly cheaper but less reliably fast option, I’d check it before falling back to the others, similar to how I currently check both Uber and Lyft for pricing.
This app exists, it's called indrive
Didn't we have something very similar with sidecar, and nobody knew about them? They couldn't compete with Uber and Lyft and went under. That's from vague memory...