Hacker News Reader

Comment by gffrd | Hacker News Reader

This is what I want to know.

Ridesharing fares are obviously underpriced … and if they were raised 30% to make them sustainable, it becomes "not worth it" for a good chunk of people who use ridesharing as a supplement to car, bus, transit, etc.

I assume the strategy is a long-play to have people + communities become wholly dependent on your services (they skip buying cars, skip learning to drive, transit fails to evolve further), then once they are, ratchet up the prices? It's just that you have to clear that point first, otherwise :pile of burning cash emoji:

View on HN

I think Uber is a lost cause, sorry to say but the food delivery business cannot be profitable for a majority of customers to where they will still pay for takeout. Their ATS service(self driving cars etc) was using stolen technology from waymo, now they are forced to using their own technologies they are way behind waymo, aurora, nuro, etc. Even ride hailing which is supposed to be their bread and butter is losing money, trying to up the ride costs and expect a huge drop in riders. Lastly Covid-19 joined the party, nobody wants to ride in a strangers car who could be infected (or visa-versa). This mindset of fear of the virus could take a year or so to subside, by then how much money will they have burnt?

The worst part is consumers have also lost because of uber. The promise of convenient, affordable transportation will not be delivered. Uber/Lyft rides will be more expensive than cab rides were because users have to support Uber's overhead.

self driving cars are the answer, which are impervious to pandemics like coronavirus as an added bonus and will reduce the human death toll inflicted from motor-vehicle casualties at the hands of human drivers.

I'm not convinced that self driving cars are pandemic proof, on the contrary. Who's gonna desinfect the car seates and handles of an autonomous self driving car during a deadly pandemic? It's a lot safer to use your own car than a virus and bacteria ridden shared car used by God knows how many infected people. The customer isn't gonna clean it. So you need workers to clean and desinfect the car after every single ride. Even if you use robots, the cars must drive to the cleaning facility first, dramatically reducing their availability on the streets and profitability.

Yes, I can't wait to buy a self driving car :)

Ride hailing wasn’t losing money.

Not only was it not losing money. It was actually quite profitable pre-covid.

For a long time ubers have been more expensive in sydney (which is known to be one of their most profitable markets) for many rides than taxis - there is an added convenience of Uber that taxis are only just catching up to (in terms of seeing where your ride is/wait time) but a fair percentage of the time I prefer taxis these days now - fixed price and the driver generally knows where he’s going instead of following a map and driving like a person who only got behind the wheel last week

Even that monopoly-style strategy never made sense to me since the barrier to entry for a competitor to create a ride-coordination app is low (Lyft has made one, Google, certainly could) and the switching-cost to the end user is low (I have zero loyalty to Uber or Lyft).

>Ridesharing fares are obviously underpriced … and if they were raised 30% to make them sustainable, it becomes "not worth it" for a good chunk of people who use ridesharing as a supplement to car, bus, transit, etc.

Though right now seems like a pretty good time to raise prices to the degree that they haven't already. I suspect that for some time to come those who can afford to do so will pay a significant premium to avoid public transit.

> I assume the strategy is a long-play to have people + communities become wholly dependent on your services (they skip buying cars, skip learning to drive, transit fails to evolve further), then once they are, ratchet up the prices?

You forgot: drive sustainable incumbents out of business by undercutting them, even though you have higher actual cost, with VC subsidies.

Why would you say they are underpriced?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com