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Comment by yapcguy | Hacker News Reader

> "The $258 million is a 86% chunk of Google Ventures’ $300 million dollar a year fund, and its unclear as to whether the firm will continue to make such sizable investments."

So a towncar hire service, with an app, is worth over $3bn ? Really?!

Maybe there's one or two other metropolitan cities in the US where the taxi service isn't up to scratch, but where is the growth going to come from?

I doubt whether regulators and taxi unions in London, Tokyo or Hong Kong would sit idly by when some Silicon Valley kool-aid types come knocking.

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People spend $10B on taxis per year in the United States alone. Smartphone adoption is going to reach 100%. I think if you put those two together, you really can't pigeonhole this type of service as "just another Silicon Valley app."

* Build out the technology so that every existing cab service can license and whitelabel

* Build out the service so that Uber is the central dispatch to any ride option based on price - also playing into the whitelabel/building of tech

* Provide Uber a significant fund with which to seek M&As of existing taxi cos all over the place

* Provide an investment sizeable enough to serve as national/global free PR for the service, investment

* Provide an investment large enough to back a significant legal team that can take on any metro taxi service's bitching

* Provide an investment large enough to lobby the hell out of local/national representation

Combine it with Google's autonomous vehicle technology, and you can begin to envisage a future where the idea of owning your own car with ~5% utilization is viewed as ridiculous, or at least an unnecessary luxury.

That may be true, but we're at least a few years away from Google's autonomous vehicles being on the road, much less mass adoption. Even longer for vehicle ownership patterns in the US to change dramatically enough that an autonomous-car-hire service will eat the world.

It may happen, but there is such an enormous gap of time between then and now that I wouldn't exactly be picking winners just yet.

By the most optimistic timeframe, it sounds like Google might be ready as soon as 2.5 years from now. (based on this article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147940-google-self-drivin...)

They might now be at the point where they have to pick a winner to start integrating. Their engineers have already been driving these things around for years. They probably already have a v1.0 release date in mind.

But why Uber?

Uber isn't really a tech company, in the same way Amazon isn't really a tech company. The Secret Sauce(tm) behind Uber is logistics - in managing a highly fluid workforce, dispatching, etc.

Not much of which transfers into this post-human-driver world. I like Uber, but I don't think Uber being Uber really confers a large advantage over new entrants when the autonomous cars become reality.

It would seem to me that, when the time comes, any number of companies run by reasonably talented people with capital backing can start a car service. Uber's edge applies to their human-driver business.

Uber has the strongest brand. Uber's job is probably to build trust, push a convenience and affordability message.

If Google want to hit the ground running with a robot taxi service, they need Uber to be growing into something that my parents might use in parallel with the finishing touches being put on their AI cars.

Presumably by 5% utilization you mean by time. But the main depreciation factor on owning your car, aside from driving off the lot, is miles driven. If your car were driven 50% of the time with the kind of street/highway blend of mileage typical of a taxi, it wouldn't last nearly as long and your insurance and maintenance costs would be far higher.

Even when taxis are readily available I still prefer Uber. UberX is cheaper than a cab for many thing and it's much less hassle. I get in, the driver drives, then I get out... no fumbling with cash or swiping cards, signing things, and worrying about tips. In San Francisco I can even get a yellow taxi cab via Uber.

Is it worth $3B? I don't know... but it's certainly not as insane as some other valley companies.

Maybe they are therefore taking this to markets where the taxi business is more open to competition and not so tightly regulated.

I see great opportunities here as they are not limited to traditional taxi services. Once you have the infrastructure in place, you can for example start doing something that is between traditional taxi and tradinaional public transportation (in Finland there are trials running for this kind of system[1]). And once you have self driving cars, it would be interesting to evolve into car sharing scheme style of things [2], where can summon a car to your door with smart phone app.

[1] https://kutsuplus.fi/tour [2] http://www.citycarclub.co.uk/

That is some seriously high valuation given Uber's current (and even projected) numbers. But I understand what Google is trying to do. I would agree that the self driving car business will take a lot longer than we think even in places like Silicon Valley. Still it is a plausible future although I believe people will still like taking taxis.

Disclaimer: I will be working for Hailo soon, the London start-up which is Uber's competitor. I believe both companies have their strengths and tackle different bands of the same market.

That is the beauty of services that are easy to sell. Everything is fairly clear, it is "just" a matter of execution at scale - i know i am oversimplifying the execution bit, but most startups have trouble figuring out the product-market fit, and even if they do, often have markets that are small.

I guess this has to do with Google self-driving cars. Maybe they are envisaging to replace taxi drivers in the future; and having a seat in Uber will definitively help them.

Haven't you heard? They're doing helicopters now too.

Now they have a quarter million more in leverage.

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