Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

> When Wired's editor at large, Steven Levy, asked him to estimate the cost of a 2.95-mile Uber ride in New York City, Khosrowshahi ventured "20 bucks" — less than half the actual price of $51.69, including a tip for the driver.

“I mean it’s one banana, Micheal, what could it cost… $10?”

View on HN

This is the opposite of that joke though. Sure, both demonstrate rich people being out of touch with regular life, but the real life version is even more depression than the joke from the show; things being cheaper than a rich person expects wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but even a billionaire CEO thinking that the cost of a common service (from their own company!) is too high is a pretty clear sign that common people will struggle be able to afford things.

To be fair, prices fluctuate a lot based on time of day. Just checked the price of a 2.7 mile ride to a restaurant I like in Brooklyn and an UberX is $17.90.

Mentioning Brooklyn is also a good segue into the ambiguity of a ride "in New York City"; I suspect that even at the same time the price of a ride will vary by borough (or even neighborhood within a borough). The price of a ride from lower to upper Manhattan will presumably be different than the same distance in Brooklyn or the Bronx or Queens (although we can all probably agree that no reasonable person would interpret the question as being about Staten Island...)

Yea, but that's their system. If you can't predict the price of a ride because it changes minute by minute, then that's not exactly great.

Not great for who?

Yes, I agree with this completely. Depending on the time and day, a price could be wildly off even compared to the exact same route a month earlier.

But I don't get this. I'm looking up a 3 mile ride from me in NYC ride now and it says $19.47 in the Uber app.

So seems like Khosrowshahi was right about the base price? I'm assuming Levy must have encountered surge pricing, but there's no way Khosrowshahi could have known how much that would be.

Maybe Levy added a $30 tip?

That would actually be a hilarious, though totally unethical, journalist "gotcha" to make Dara seem out-of-touch.

Anecdotally, I have taken dozens of 3 mile ride in lower Manhattan and $20 is a typical estimate for what I have spent. Sometimes it is higher, and then I take the subway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com