Uber in trouble

PasturesNew

If the bus costs you £4 and takes over an hour to get to where you want to be, if the taxi does it for £10 in 15 minutes without waiting in the rain and you can afford it, you'll do that. Then the buses will be less full, so routes will be cut - and a few more people are "forced" into taking the Uber offering .... until finally there are only 6 people on the bus and the route's cut entirely and it's Uber, walk, drive, or don't go.

Peter_Williams

All this Uber and Lyft hype is a load of nonsense.
Getting a man to drive you in a car from A to B will always have a certain cost in terms of labour and machinery.
No amount of fancy software gimmicks will change this fact.

chucknorris

Peter_Williams wrote: »

All this Uber and Lyft hype is a load of nonsense.
Getting a man to drive you in a car from A to B will always have a certain cost in terms of labour and machinery.
No amount of fancy software gimmicks will change this fact.

For me, it is not about the cost, it is all about the convenience, as far as I am concerned cost doesn't really come into it. Unless you are talking about real astronomical differences.

TomPucci85

In London, I find that a bike is the fastest way to get from A to B during rush hours. Takes traffic off the roads, is healthy, and by far cheapest

Saying that, after a night out, I do edge towards Uber. Although competition is out there that's doing it a lot better, Kapten for example have not cancelled on me once - until Uber gets it's own vehicles, it's just software that can be copied

sal_III

Herzlos wrote: »

I don't know how competition will affect them, as these tech companies will need some critical mass in order to be useful. If you use company x but it's 20 minutes for a car Vs 5 from Uber you're going to take Uber unless company x is much cheaper.

You miss the fact that the same driver can drive for multiple "apps". The ride share drivers have no contracts and owe no elegance to a specific company. As soon as there is an alternative that offers them a bigger cut, they will start using it. And the drivers can be the perfect advertising platform. If for example you hire them through Uber, they can tell you "Next time use app X it's cheaper and all my mates are driving for it in addition to Uber" etc.

This is the biggest threat to Uber and why it will never end up being profitable. It's all good an nice to burn through piles of cash as a start up to build market share, as long as you can defend that market share in the future. The Uber operating model is so simple to replicate that this is impossible. Uber's market share has already tanked in some Asian countries where a local alternative has sprung on the cheap undercutting Uber.

the_flying_pig

Has its uses from a passenger perspective but always struck me as a bit of a pyramid scheme, the sorts of waiting times they seem to aspire to won't ever make it possible for drivers to earn a living, maybe not even a worthwhile part time income.

This is the front page of their website, maybe telling that they're primarily advertising the 'income opportunity' rather than passenger service, looks like herbalife or arbonne or similar...

edgex

cogito wrote: »

How so? I can agree the price in advance, I know who the driver is which makes me feel safer and I don’t need cash.

You can't pre-book a car.
Doing a journey that's not simply to/from a centre, or away from a main road, either gets no cars or a very expensive predicted price (tried a few weeks ago, rang local taxi firm instead & they were ~£15 cheaper) *
They ding you with surcharges, even though they know up-front what the journey is. (did a journey with a drop-off, that gets charged for, then another charge for going over a certain distance, both are on top of the predicted price)



* think this is because the system is actually quite dumb. A taxi firm with people in an office dispatching cars, they know where a car is going & how long it will be, so if a call comes in from that destination area, they can say to the caller 'car can be with you in 5/10 minutes'.
I assume Uber et al will only show calls to drivers already in that area, & not currently on a journey.

Out,_Vile_Jelly

Part of my job involves processing expense claims. I've done the same role for years, and have really noticed an increase in the number of claims for taxis. People are putting in Uber receipts for short trips costing about £3. This makes me think a) how much profit can a driver actually make on this kind of journey after Uber's cut, petrol and other car costs and b) how depressingly lazy it's making people.

kinger101

hugheskevi wrote: »

Depreciation: £643 p/a (£4,500 car, expected to be kept for 7 years)
VED:£30 p/a
Insurance: £314
Breakdown cover: £28
MoT, service, consumables, etc: £200
Fuel: 7.5 miles per £ of fuel

I agree with your points on the cost and convenience, but I think you've underestimated the costs slightly.

It has be a fairly good year to get away with only £200 for MOT, servicing and maintenance (unless you can do it yourself). You might have not needed much done lately, but eventually there will be tyres, brake discs, brake pads, corroded pipes, exhaust, cam belt........



Then there's parking, road tolls etc.