The Uber example is also an outright lie.
They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them.
Then they raised prices beyond their competition to account for their ridiculous overheads.
They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them.
Then they raised prices beyond their competition to account for their ridiculous overheads.
That is exaggerated. Uber was losing something like $0.50-$1 per ride in 2018.
Uber/Lyft were (and still mostly are) just _better_ than taxis.
I don’t know if I trust Ubers numbers on this. I don’t know what they’re counting as “cost per ride”. Does engineers salaries factor into that? What about data centers? Advertising?
If you factor all of it in, then they’re losing billions.
Well, yes. However, the impact of that on the ride cost is exaggerated.
> Does engineers salaries factor into that? What about data centers? Advertising?
Yes.
> If you factor all of it in, then they’re losing billions.
And when you divide it by the number of rides, you get into sub-$1 figures.
Yeah, because they’re losing the money. Meaning YOU’RE not paying it, it’s being lost.
Keep in mind this is also with:
- uber not providing the capital for their rides. Taxi companies buy taxis, uber says you buy it.
- vastly underpaying their work force.
- skirting employment laws with gig work
- relying on tips! The ride cost doesn’t include tips, despite that being a huge portion of wages!
The time is 1256 as of the time of this comment.
SFO International to Montgomery St. Station: Earliest arrival is 1346
Driving: Earliest arrival is 1323
My experience is that the car takes ~6 min to arrive to pick you up for Uber. You can call it earlier, but assuming you call it when you arrive and then wait that's 1322. You lose 23 minutes to BART.
And that's BART station to BART station. Change it slightly, like to my home near Caltrain and it's pointless. The cost in time is way more than $25.
Thank you for doing the math - we're only talking about 23 of them? it's entirely possible to capitalize on 23 minutes, but seriously, 23 minutes?
I can wholeheartedly understand complaints about Uber and Lyft, but I don't understand at all when I sometimes see this collective amnesia about how much taxis sucked before rideshare came on the scene.
Seattle has added some extra fees and pay requirements for drivers that drive up the cost of a ride share. In retaliation to these laws, ride share companies have also raised prices.
An Uber from my house to the SeaTac airport used to cost about $30 5 or 6 years ago. It's now around $100. A taxi is about $80 now. Paying for parking is cheaper now than either of those options.
That type of ride from a "hub" where a bunch of taxis congregate to take the next passenger -- such as SEATAC airport -- is optimal for traditional taxis and can be cheaper. But using Uber for suburb-to-suburb routes away from any hubs is cheaper than taxis and I tried to explain why that happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30660517
People should be asking themselves if their service is a quango waiting to happen, because most of them definitely are.
Ridiculous to think that a cab driver in 2025 is not using GPS. I don't believe that.
I could start hunting around for a local taxi app, which may or may not work, may or may not have any cars
I could get in a waiting taxi at the airport, but then I run into issues with cash etc
I could use uber while I'm still collecting my bag and have a known car and known experience waiting for me
Every Uber or Bolt can also operate as a taxi since the regulations stipulate that any private passenger transport service is the same as a taxi, and has to follow the same regulations.