Their "taxi" business model was completely unsustainable. A moonshot was/is the only thing that'd save them. That's why they did this (the self-driving part we know for sure, and the alleged stuff, if proven).
Taxi services are a centuries-old profitable business model (London had first laws regulating "taxis" in the 1600s).
Dispatch via app is a solid improvement over the old phonecalls or street pickup, automatic credit card billing is an improvement over cash, and in cities with shady taxi drivers, GPS tracking is an improvement over potentially hacked taxi meters.
So there is an obviously valuable business model for "taxi dispatch app" here even without a moonshot - just perhaps smaller than Uber's dream of being the only provider of personal transportation in the world.
i never understood why something like food / grocery delivery never took off with lyft/uber. they could partner with costco and do deliveries. I would love that.
They literally do this. It's also not that great. Want to pay $12.00 for a cold $8.00 sandwich? Safeway has its own delivery service in some markets and so does Amazon. Instacart does Costco delivery as well. Costco itself has business delivery at least and possibly other delivery options.
Yeah, but for Costco it actually makes sense. Costco sells items that are big, bulky and hard to transport, and they already do a ton of logistics - supply chain stuff is a big part of why they remain profitable. Uber is trying to do something that other people are already doing, better, for less cost, without experience. It isn't working out.
Does supply chain expertise really carry over to last mile delivery though? Especially hot food delivery. Seems like Uber's strength is getting to where the customer actually is instead of putting the product where it is most economical.
> Dispatch via app is a solid improvement over the old phonecalls or street pickup, automatic credit card billing is an improvement over cash, and in cities with shady taxi drivers, GPS tracking is an improvement over potentially hacked taxi meters.
It's also the easiest part to copy, most taxi companies have already. Now try asking they investors why the spent so many billions of dollars to break into the taxi business?
I disagree. They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. Instead, hyper aggressive business tactics (which were largely unwarranted) has backfired.
The issue is that autonomous tech that's good enough to do what Uber would need it to do (reliable door to door transportation without a human available to take any degree of control in a wide range of conditions) isn't close. Even a decade or two--which IMO is optimistic--isn't really a useful timeframe for Uber.
i disagree again, making cars isn't the competitive advantage it's being able to run and service large fleets of cars, taxi / bus companies with all the physical plants would have the competitive advantage out of the gate.
I disagree, if you make the cars you can create them from the ground up to be self driving taxis. Think of all the improvements you could make to make better use of the cabin.
If you are retrofitting existing cars you are wasting a ton of money and getting a half baked solution to a dedicated provider.
What position is that? Having a popular taxi app? That really isn't much; that advantage can disappear in an instant when a cheaper/better competitor appears.
Actually developing self-driving tech and then deploying it is almost entirely unrelated to the business that Uber has developed thus far. It's an enormous undertaking, and they were starting from almost zero.
They're a decade late and have no engineering culture. All they could do was throw money at the problem. If they weren't hyper aggressive they would have looked to partner with someone more experienced or to play vendors off each other.
Prime candidates for sure but I don't know about prime position as they clearly had a lot of ground to make up on the tech. I agree with you on the hyper-aggressive business tactics, I bet there was an Aha! moment where they were like..wait, what if we get rid of the drivers?!
A taxi company has well understood financials and valuation and would never be given a crack at VC Lotto.
In addition, the kind of quality control that Uber/Lyft exert over drivers almost certainly places the drivers in the position of being employees which makes things even more unprofitable.
They're not. Every major car company plus competitors are focusing on self-driving cars. Why pay a human what a machine can do for cheaper? Uber's future depends on being first with self driving cars.
Being a good taxi company in the 21st century will mean good at self-driving cars.
I disagree. Uber's transportation-as-a-service model is likely to be far more cost effective when applied to self driving cars than car ownership is. Self driving cars will initially be quite expensive, making outright buying one cost-prohibitive. By the time costs come down transportation-as-a-service will have taken over the industry, and few people will have any particular desire to own their own car anymore.
Not to mention that transportation-as-a-service would also be a lot more convenient than car ownership. No need to refuel, repair, or otherwise maintain your vehicle; just grab whichever one happens to be nearby. You can have as many or as few cars as you need at any particular moment, and get a car of any model or paint color you want at the push of a button.
> Self driving cars will initially be quite expensive...
Not relevant to my assertion. I said when they become the norm, as in, when they're no more expensive as other cars.
> ... transportation-as-a-service would also be a lot more convenient than car ownership.
This means I can share a car with several friends, neighbors, or room-mates with little fuss. The problem with sharing a car today is licensing, insurance, and the inconvenience of the car being stuck somewhere when in use. If it acted, instead, as your own personal driver it can handle multiple trips concurrently. Two people go to the movies, so they're committed for X hours, and in that interim instead of sitting in a parking lot the car can deal with other things.
Uber's business model arbitrages the difficulty and expense of owning a car vs. the expense of buying a cab ride. If the car becomes more cost effective because of personal ride-sharing their margin evaporates.
Today a decent car would cost me about $600/mo. all-in. If I could buy a 1/6th share in a car for $100/mo. and be able to use it in short stints with little contention that's going to be cheaper than Uber if I use it more than a handful of times.
> I said when they become the norm, as in, when they're no more expensive as other cars.
My point is that self-driving cars will become the norm long before they're "no more expensive as other cars" precisely because of transportation-as-a-service companies like Uber. By the time we start getting anywhere near the point where self-driving cars are "no more expensive as other cars", car ownership will already have been largely supplanted by transportation-as-a-service.
> If I could buy a 1/6th share in a car for $100/mo. and be able to use it in short stints with little contention that's going to be cheaper than Uber if I use it more than a handful of times.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. It sounds like you're describing transportation-as-a-service, but with the additional restriction of you only being able to use one particular car that you "own" 1/6th of instead of any car that happens to be nearby at the time when you request it.
That sounds like a needless restriction, and negates many of the advantages of transportation-as-a-service (no need to refuel, repair, or otherwise maintain your vehicle, the flexibility to obtain as many cars as you want at any particular moment, the ability to use a pickup truck one day and a minivan the next, etc).
Also, why would that be cheaper than Uber? I think a service like Uber is likely to be far more efficient with the usage of their self-driving fleet than you could ever be with any one, individual car, even if that car _is_ shared between multiple people.
They were hoping for a combination of first-mover advantage and recognizable brand name / known player.
If you're used to taking an Uber on occasion, taking an AutoUber isn't a big deal, just like trying a new coffee at Starbucks.
Even if GM is selling L5 autonomous cars to everybody in 2025, they're going to cost as much as a car does. Why buy it when you can pay by the ride? And Uber wants to be the name you think of when summoning a ride.
Not so much buying one, but if you really do own one, then you can rent your car out autonomously. Ford, GM and others have mentioned this is the plan, so Uber's model is really junked because everyone is an uber/lyft.
