Linking to the site directly, likely with a bit of tracking information related to me, but allowing non-subscribers to access it without hitting the paywall. It also gives the actual experience.
As a former driver, I concur that Lyft is better than Uber for a couple of reasons: customer service and serving the needs of the poor. I was able to actually get a human at Lyft to talk to several times to resolve issues in favor of the customer. The bill was corrected on the spot. I was never able to get a human at Uber for any reason at any time.
For the poor, I did a lot of runs taking older low income patients to dialysis clinics. Several rides were set up before hand where I took mentally disabled people to clinics (I was instructed not to drop them off in between home and the clinic if they requested.) Admittedly, Lyft is not a charity, so they're probably making good government money, but I like that Lyft made the effort to help the less fortunate and gave me the opportunity to feel like I was doing something that mattered.
In my experience (Boston metro), if I want to save a little money at the risk of a long delay or not getting a ride, I’ll use Lyft. If I want to actually get the ride, especially from the airport, Uber is way more reliable.
This is crazy to hear. It's the exact opposite here in Vancouver. Uber cancels rides left and right, wait time estimates are always a joke. Lyft shows up every time, on time - and is the pricier option! It's surprising that two providers swap roles in different markets.
In this case, I think it’s driven* by Uber’s surge pricing.
Most Lyft drivers are also Uber drivers. If Uber is on 2.5x surge from the airport, why would drivers accept Lyft rides? They should logically decline every Lyft ride offered until an hour after the last flight lands.
I think that’s what’s happening. Uber is quoting me $60-75 (normally $25-30) and Lyft is saying $28. Being frugal, I pick Lyft. Being sensible, Lyft drivers turn down the ride. Lyft tells me I have a ride coming, but eventually times out until I give up on them, conclude they are full of it, and refresh the Uber quote until I get one in the $35-45 range.
* - pun not originally intended, but left in place.
Yeah, that seems wildly broken. I'm quite certain Lyft has variable pricing here and it seems to function exactly the same as surge pricing (I was watching prices from both apps roller coaster when trying to leave a festival a few weeks ago). Maybe that's something Lyft has done differently between regions.
Airports are a different animal and I refuse to do them if I can help it. Uber drivers in the SF Bay Area compete aggressively for airport runs, so if that's any indication then I'm not surprised Uber is better for your airport. It's easy to break a rule at an airport and get a ticket, it's always a mad rush, and some passengers are cranky and get mad if you don't act like their personal driver in regards to luggage handling. Some drivers can't figure out there are much easier ways to make good money.
It blew my mind in San Francisco when uber and Lyft had huge wait times but I could hail a cab on the street no problem. The cab had free water in it too.
I've lived in the Bay Area for over a decade, and SF for 7 years, and I've never seen this. Cabs are painfully rare and even when you call, don't show up half the time.
They're talking about at the airport, just walk out and get on one, it's way more convient than uber at SFO. I fly to SF 7 times a year, and have been since 2015. There was a small window where cabs sucked but they're usually quite convient at sfo and closer / easier than rideshare, and usually around $48-53 to the financial
OK but that doesn't have anything to do with either of the points they were making? It's a completely separate thing?
I've never had an at all reasonable experience using any rideshare for an airport pickup, fwiw. End up on the phone with the driver trying to explain what terminal I'm at, how to identify the pickup zone, the entire concept of an airport really. When there's a taxi stand with a waiting professional driver right there it just does not make sense.
Depending on the airport, I've found Lyft and Uber drivers to be more professional than the taxi drivers. In Boston, the taxi drivers would angrily curse at me for my destination and then drive recklessly, hoping to get back to the airport before the flight finished disembarking.
Interesting. I also fly out/into Boston typically and have never had an issue with Lyft in either direction, and at all kinds of odd flight times, and also arranging rides for visiting friends, relatives, etc.. (I always use Lyft and have never signed up for Uber due to it's fractally exploitative business practices; if I can avoid such a company, I do).
Coming home solo with a roller bag? I almost always take the T, but it’s a 30 minute walk after the red line ride.
For my most recent “Lyft accepted the ride twice and failed twice at 15 minutes each throw” experience on Friday, the T was already in bed for the evening (or about to be, meaning it couldn’t be counted on).
Getting to the airport? There’s too much variability from the T and I don’t like sitting at Logan for an extra 45 minutes when the T decides to operate smoothly nor stand and worry the extra 45 minutes when it decides to be crappy service. (That variability cost is on top of the 45-60 extra minutes the T takes over a car.)
Multiple bags or flying with the kids? Car service every time.
The T is a hub and spoke system. If you want to go quickly between two spokes, Lyft or Uber can be much faster. And with a group, sometimes even cheaper than paying for individual T rides.
not op, but as a student in cambridge, the T is very good for getting in and around boston, but getting to cambridge is a little bit of hassle. take the red line all the way to park street, and then take it back around almost in a loop to anywhere on the green line.
i don't know why i'm complaining though, it is still a fantastic public transportation system compared to many others.
Do we really need a graph of a tech stock that goes "'20 Boom, '22 bust". Here's the thing - in this article about how Uber is beating Lyft, you could have shown a chart of Uber's stock price, and no one would've noticed the difference. Even the central thesis of the article is flawed. Both of these companies are starting to trade like they're big taxi companies. Which they are. The only advantage that Uber has is they do food delivery (that's going to go great during a recession) and scooters. Now, I don't know how much Uber makes on scooters, so shall we look at a competitor to see how well that industry is doing? Bird Scooter spac'd at 2.3Bn. How's that going? Oh well, you know, they're being delisted by NYSE because they're a penny stock.
I was curious to see if you are right about the stock performance over time. It turns out that the two companies stock traded very similarly until May of this year. After that, Lyft really has had terrible performance relative to Uber:
The problem is the google chart puts the zero line for the two stocks at their IPO date even though they have different IPO dates, as almost any two stocks you choose to compare would. If you're going to compare the two stocks at the same point in time, they should probably be both at zero on the first day when they both have a price, as Yahoo's chart does (switch to 5Y).
I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why Google Finance would graph stocks this way. The only thing I can think is they didn't consider the intersection of "comparing stocks" and "they might have IPOed in the time range".
No, they launched the service, took their promotions and then left to launch newer products for more promotions. No one was left to improve the existing product.
All stocks are somewhat correlated. When the market overall goes up or down, it drags all the stocks along somewhat. When investors get more confident in the market overall, they also get more confident in each individual stock. See this example of Microsoft and Ford[1]. When the companies are so similar like Lyft and Uber, you'll of course get even more correlation. But Lyft and Uber differ beyond just May. Since June 1, Uber is up 16%, and Lyft is down 24%.
Right if the above comment is trying to simplify it as both of them following the pattern of "'20 Boom, '22 bust", it's not true.
They did both start declining at the same time about 9 months before the overall market did, in April 2021 instead of Jan 2022. But from IPO up until that decline started, Lyft was already down 20% whereas Uber was up 50%. Then this decline has been much worse for Lyft as well, down 80% from April 2021 whereas Uber is down 55%.
That's a pretty big difference between the two companies.
Frankly, anybody saying "the only thing Uber has over X is Y" hasn't been paying enough attention.
Uber hasn't been doing scooters for a while. The rentals in the app are through Lime. Stuff like self driving and aviation also got offloaded to Aurora and Joby, respectively.
The third largest vertical for Uber is freight, not scooters. $1.8B in revenue there in Q2.
The rides business now has several arms, from B2B corporate accounts to numerous partnerships with players in adjacent and semi-adjacent industries.
The eats business is branching into general last mile delivery (e.g. cornershop acquisition).
The B2C strategy now is to bundle all the rides/rentals/food/deliveries services into the Uber One membership package, similar to the Amazon Prime/Costco volume-incentivizing model.
Look through the careers site and you see there's an ads arm spinning up.
I'm seeing a very clear change in focus from pie-in-the-sky ideas to more proven business strategies.
My first taxi passenger in 2012 was a woman going for outpatient surgery. Her Medicaid plan was paying for the transportation. The company’s computer system kept track of her fare.
In the old days the “voucher” fares were on paper slips. Most the hospitals and clinics switched to the taxi company’s electronic systems by the late 2000’s, but we still saw a few of the old paper vouchers… one of my more memorable fares was a woman going home from the hospital with a paper voucher. She’d taken herself to the ER on account of her monthly misery. They gave her pain medicine, as if that would help her financial situation, or her PTSD from childhood abuse.
Nothing unique about Uber and Lyft having contracts.
Basically it's business accounts for doctor offices to arrange transportation for their patients. Many elderly patients have trouble getting to doctor appointments because they don't have smartphones, can't drive, live in areas w/ poor public transit/taxi coverage, etc.
It didn't used to be underserved. We used to have taxis.
And while taxis didn't always like to pick up people in low-traffic areas, they always came for medical transports because they could bill insurance companies extra.
Who is this “we”? Back in the day my town (college town of ~100k) had lime 5 taxis total, and they mostly
Only worked fri/sat night hauling the more responsible drunks home.
> food delivery (that's going to go great during a recession)
I'm just curious why you think that food delivery will do great during a recession, could you comment on that? I find Uber Eats to be utterly overpriced. I would assume that people will scale down on eating out during a recession or will look for ways to save on it (picking up by themselves, eating more at home, etc.)
Cool, let me know when either of them has a positive earnings per share.
I'm still a bit surprised that we don't see more investor pressure for many of these companies to demonstrate that they actually can turn a profit.
I get it, when Uber was just in SF, the argument was "don't worry about profit, just grow until you eat the entire industry... then you turn on the profit switch". But here we are, Uber has IPO'd, is in every city in the US and many countries around the world, and has only one major competitor which the WSJ claims is "eating their dust".
When do you flip that profit switch if not now?
The most obvious reason I can think for not flipping the switch is there is none. Still very curious when, if ever, the market will care.
> The most obvious reason I can think for not flipping the switch is there is none. Still very curious when, if ever, the market will care.
This is exactly correct. If they could have, it would be profitable by now.
A lot of these large tech companies simply act as wealth transfer vehicles, enriching a few key players. When private, the insane valuations drive ever larger VC funding rounds with early investors cashing out with money from later rounds. Leadership teams take home millions in compensation and equity. All of them have a huge incentive to keep the fiction going.
By the time the company goes public, the last rats leave the sinking ship with public money and the company is now a zombie. Everyone left is just scavenging the scraps leftover until a few unlucky souls are left holding the bag.
The thing is I can't convince myself that this is meaningfully different than a classic ponzi scheme. I guess because they have a "product" and and a revenue stream. But their business is basically selling $1.00 for $0.90 -- no surprise that their volume is insane.
As a former employee, I think this is exactly what happened. A handful of people made out big while keeping up appearances. The closer you get to the executive-level, the faster the turnover rate. I've never seen that before in ~10 companies I've worked with. The internal game is maintaining confidence to subordinates while quietly selling your stake. The external game is also all about maintaining confidence, using "adjusted EBITDA". But the GAAP numbers don't lie.
They aren't just scamming the investors, they are scamming the drivers. Most drivers barely break even (if even that) driving for these services, but they are starting to catch on. It's not worth it for drivers, so there aren't enough drivers, so the customer experience is getting worse. If they paid well enough to actually compensate for the wear and depreciation on the driver's car, and also compensate the driver for his labor, they would be even less profitable.
This is such a frustratingly common take. I want to believe it but I have met so many Uber drivers with 5000+ rides who, when I ask, say they enjoy the job. I really cannot imagine these people are these for the pleasure of driving. They're making money. Maybe, probably, likely, not lots, but they are certainly at the very least making ends meet.
My last driver on vacation said he was on his 3rd vehicle over 7 years of driving with Uber. I imagine if he's still going, he's doing more than "breaking even".
> My last driver on vacation said he was on his 3rd vehicle over 7 years of driving with Uber.
I see lots of people argue that drivers don't understand depreciation, but you talk to these drivers who have been doing it for years across multiple vehicles, and they're still doing it. It seems like people want them to be exploited, so they feel justified in saying the big tech companies are bad, and it's really easy to just ignore the reality that there are many of these multi year multi vehicle drivers out there who are still doing it and say they like it and are making money. If drivers were actually losing money, you wouldn't expect to find nearly as many multi year drivers as you do.
> If drivers were actually losing money, you wouldn't expect to find nearly as many multi year drivers as you do.
That might be an oversimplification too. That suggests at least some drivers are finding it worth sticking with, absolutely. There could be systemic reasons there are others who give it up in 6mo or whatever. The ration may be interesting also.
It would be particularly interesting in how many people are maintaining a one income household with it, without other sources of income.
It may be an oversimplification but it seems like it might be challenging to classify how long someone intends to drive. Someone might drive for 6 months and leave because they were able to find full time work. I'm inclined to say that's a success and was something they were able to quickly and easily start doing while they were looking for someone else. Maybe someone else drives nights and weekends to save up for a wedding or some other one off expense and then quits. That's probably also considered a success. Simply looking at average length of work doesn't really tell us what their intent was.
I bring up the surprising number of multi year drivers because if you believe what you read online, you'd imagine that Uber is stealing from people who don't understand what depreciation is and that no one could still be doing it on their second or third vehicle. That appears not to be the case and there are numerous counter examples that disprove it. That doesn't seem to stop people from still arguing that Uber is somehow exploiting everyone.
> That appears not to be the case and there are numerous counter examples that disprove it.
My point was that the existence of said counterexamples doesn't prove anything very strong, only that clearly Uber isn't only stealing from people who don't understand depreciation, etc.
In order to actually understand what is going on, you'd need to have a broad survey (and yes, that should include people like your hypothetical). It would look something like a uniform sampling over drives (not trips) as a starting place.
Average length doesn't prove anything, but it should be clear that I wasn't suggesting it did.
Best case you are making like $20/hr. It beats a burger flipping job but not by much. In n Out starts you at $18/hr and actually provides benefits. Factor in the wear on the car, lack of a career trajectory (managers at in n out do well), and you paying for health insurance yourself, maybe it doesn't actually shake out too nice. These are uber drivers after all, who work in a field that's hard to gleam solid info about from online search engines with all the SEO spam around ridesharing topics, not accountants who are taking all these external costs into account when they calculate their actual take home pay.
Just my anecdata, but I have had two friends do work through Uber. Both had lost their jobs suddenly but thankfully had a second income through a spouse. The draw in both cases was cash in pocket now while they find something else. It was easy enough since they could almost set their schedule and they weren't looking for benefits, climbing a ladder, or becoming a premier uber driver. External/long term costs were not even a thought, even when they knew better.
I'm curious too, so did I found some data. Here are the assumptions:
- Toyota Camry Hybrid LE (about $30k to get entry-level, new)
- Driving 35 hrs / week at an average speed of 35 mph, 48 weeks of the year
- A couple thousand personal miles
- Deprecation at that rate over 3 years is about $11k
- Average Uber driver income of $0.83 / mile
Ends up with:
- Running costs of $0.16 / mile (insurance, fuel, maintenance)
- Depreciation costs of $0.06 / mile
- Total per-mile cost of $0.22 / mile
- Net per-mile income of $0.83 - $0.22 = $0.61 / mile
That's about $35,868 / year "take home."
But, it's also a best-case scenario (no major accidents, no periods where you can't work, no injuries, about the best car you can get for this kind of gig, you have the cash or credit to buy it new and you can easily sell it after 3 years). I suspect that depreciation amount to be a little low, since the calculators don't factor in Uber-driver levels of usage.
And of course, that's 1099 income. No benefits, no health insurance. If your auto insurer finds out you're a professional driver, your rates will likely go up. If you have an accident and they find out, they may void your policy.
It isn't a great gig but I have to admit that it is net-positive.
I think the hope is that you are buying a used but reliable vehicle. But I know the used car market isn't what it was. And unfortunately some markets have a hard limit for vehicle age (for carrying passengers, not food deliveries)
Ideal situation is using a vehicle you have anyway so you're only incurring the additional usage-costs and not modifying your vehicle age-costs.
I thought Uber (at least) had supplemental auto insurance coverage for when you're driving a passenger, but that's probably market-specific too (and then you're on your own personal insurance for everything else).
> They aren't just scamming the investors, they are scamming the drivers.
I agree. And this is one of the reasons that their path to profitability is impossible. Since they often cite their large customer and driver acquisition campaigns as the thing they can cut to start taking profits when they have scaled enough.
The truth is that they can't stop that spending, they need a constant stream of new drivers (suckers) to keep things going. If they stop the spend, the drivers go away.
They are doing both. Taking excessive cut from those actually providing the service and also overpromising and lying to investors. While running an over bloated over paid organisation on other levels...
I really don't think there is one. They have no competitive moat, and they know it. That's why we've seen so many antics around branching out into parallel and tangential business models over the past several years. If they knew how to make their core taxi service profitable, then I can't really see why they didn't just do that instead of faffing around with all these side hustles.
Grab app works well enough for big cities for calling a yellow cab. Also several big cities have flat rates from the airport into the city center. Ex: JFK -> NYC is $75 flat rate. I rarely see an uber cheaper than that. Also the taxis are usually waiting so you don't have to track down a random car.
All of that to say I don't think there is a profit switch. Uber doesn't really give any benefits over a taxi in large metros anymore which I assume is where most of their profit comes from.
The market seems to have thought it was worth more than twice that not very long ago. Maybe the market isn't super great at valuing things in the short term, especially things that lose money.
Whatever value we assign to the brand name "Uber", how do we appreciate the immense negative value in aggressively losing money with no end in sight? Surely that should figure into their valuation somehow.
I'm not sure their brand recognition can possibly get any better. It's been top-notch for years. All that's left is to make the unit economics work out. So, where are they on that?
The thing is, they don't have to live up to your expectations of what a valuable company should be because they are a valuable company. It's also the case with many "successful" startups that if they decided to stop expanding and make profitability their sole prerogative, it may be in reach. We don't know because they never tried, and they have no incentive to try. Their incentives are all geared towards continued massive growth.
I don't dispute that they have a market cap above zero and therefore are a 'valuable' company. But ultimately that "value" comes from a bunch of people making guesses about future cash flows.
Suppose that the unit economics for Uber do not work out, especially in a recession with high borrowing costs. It would not take long for that "value" to become zero.
You made a list of spectacularly successful companies than any one of us would have been ecstatic to have founded or been a part of early on (also, we'd be rich). You're augment seems to hinge on the fact that not all companies last forever, which is true, but hardly relevant.
They're still building back from Covid. Lyft had 3.6 billion revenue in 2019. That dipped to 2.4 in 2020, and 3.1 in 2021. They only got back to their 2019 revenue in Q1 or Q2 of 2022.
I started using Lyft because every time I book an Uber it would end up taking 3x as long to get picked up vs the estimate shown, typically 15+ minutes. Additionally, it was always "completing a trip nearby". Lyft would offer to let me pay a few bucks extra to get a ride in 3 minutes, for the same price or lower.
I've experienced the opposite in NYC where Lyft often never even finds me a car and Uber is usually nearly-instant. But on the West Coast (recent trips to SF and Seattle) the two seem comparable.
I live on the west coast and generally try to use Lyft first when I need a cab because they seem to be the marginally more ethical company, but I still often find that I can get a car from Uber faster and more affordably than Lyft. I've also found the UX of the Uber app to be a little more mature than that of Lyft. Like I can effortlessly send a cab to someone else with Uber while with Lyft it's awkward.
> but I still often find that I can get a car from Uber faster and more affordably than Lyft.
Lyft surge prices are much higher IME. At a particularly bad time, a surge Uber trip downtown where I live might be $25, Lyft will charge me $60 for the same ride. I wonder how much of that the driver sees.
I've had the opposite experience - It was 1:45am
At SJC, and Uber surge pricing for the ride home from the airport was $210.00 (this exceeded the cost of the airfare to fly 3,000 miles).
Ultimately I feel I've had both experiences depending on which locale I'm in. Depending on whether 1, the other or both ave a critical mass of vehicles in an area on any given night, I've seen either be cheaper/faster (although I find overall anecdotally that Lyft does better in places I frequent on the West Coast, Cleveland and Dallas. Everywhere else it's seemingly totally up for grabs), but neither service seems canonically "better" except that Lyft seems as mentioned previously, slightly less ethically challenged than Uber (a threshold that isn't hard to beat frankly).
Why I switched from Uber to Lyft within a week of installing it: After having already used my card for a ride, Uber insisted on verification (using the phone's camera to take a picture to show you actually have the physical card), but it uses an auto-shutter and didn't recognize my card, so it wouldn't let me verify.
Luckily I remembered Lyft existed or I would have been stranded that night. Installed and set up in less time than I had already wasted trying to get Uber to verify.
I have the opposite problem: after signing up for Lyft, it made me "verify my payment method" by adding a second payment method with the same address. My second payment method had the same problem, and the only option left was to directly connect a bank account, which I didn't want to do. Uber took my credit card without a problem.
I hope that Lyft stays around, because I can't use Uber for a similar reason as you.
Uber insists on sending me an SMS verification code. But the code never arrives.
I have no problem with any other app, just Uber. But I can't get anyone at Uber to look at the problem because I'm an human being (read: "edge case") and I don't scale.
I looked at Lyft once and it required a Facebook account to sign up. I laughed and have never touched it since. This is a probably 10 year old grudge at this point, but fuck ‘em. I don’t use Spotify for the same reason. At least that seems to have gone away for new services now, but what a terrible idea that was.
I switched from Uber to Lyft when it waited to tell me that I must wear a mask until after I had clicked "book my ride".
Like, what a hostile UX design. I walked out of the airport, got to the ride-share pick-up area, and was then told by Uber I needed a mask. So I had to walk all the way back to the baggage claim to buy a mask at a store.
No need to be hostile, but I suppose I worded my comment a bit poorly.
I have no problem with following local law (or even just whatever Uber wants to enforce). I was annoyed that Uber's app did not make me aware of the mask requirement until after I was ready to book my ride.
Airports often have special pickup areas dedicated to rideshares. I always walk to the pickup area before booking when at an unfamiliar airport, because I don't know how long it'll take me to get there, and I don't want to keep my driver waiting.
In this case the pickup area was outside of the airport terminal and a fairly long walk. When I reached the pickup area I tapped 'book', and Uber then told me I needed a mask. I then had to walk back to the terminal to buy a mask.
So, I deleted Uber and installed Lyft. The first thing Lyft showed me was that a mask is required to ride in the area.
> Has it not been obvious that you need a mask when in enclosed spaces with strangers
If it's required by law, or if the driver asks me to, then I'm happy to comply. If I'm given the choice, I choose not to wear a mask.
I was traveling and was unaware that the locality that I had traveled to legally required a mask while in rideshares. I chose to respect law and my driver by walking back to the terminal to purchase a mask, rather than ignoring the message.
Wastewater tracking provides better data. Regardless, you're making the same logical mistake that as those folks claiming there's no evidence that flossing prevents tooth decay.
And, I seem to remember seeing a chart of ... maybe it was average time to infection on a matrix of different kinds of masks for the carrier and the exposed. The short of it was that masks on both people help lengthen the time.
"Lyft has since ditched the facial hair, but it hasn’t matured much geographically. It remains a North American business predominantly focused on the U.S. market. And while Uber has enjoyed the Covid-precipitated boom in food delivery over the past few years, Lyft remains largely a rideshare company."
"But Lyft’s total revenue is forecast by analysts to remain less than a third of Uber’s global ride-hailing business alone this year"
"Not surprisingly, Uber is racing to broaden its horizons, adding taxi and other travel bookings as well as alcohol and grocery delivery. For now, Lyft is still chugging along the same beaten path."
Lyft is a purely rideshare company in only the US market. Uber is doing all kinds of different shit, globally. Yet the article makes it seem strange that Lyft is "eating Uber's dust", when they are barely comparable.
Lyft turned me off in the beginning. Pink mustache. Fist bump. Small talk. Some sort of hip cult. What the heck... I just wanted to go from A to B. I'm sure I'm not alone.
But I've switched to Lyft though mainly because a lot of friends work there.
well, they do compete head-on in US and a bigger company with more worldwide revenue could displace the other one, so from that angle the comparison seems relevant.
It seems like a fundamental issue is that there's no really no product differentiation - a Lyft's end result is the same as Uber (getting to your destination) so the only path to winning is having the money to outspend your opponent. Now that Uber's cut out the bullshit with self-driving and endless expansion, and started to focus on winning in the US, I see a tough road ahead for Lyft.
It's a fair point, but Uber still does a lot of bullshit. Freight, Eats, Packages, Scooters, Public transport SaaS stuff, and probably others I don't know about. Plus, they're doing that stuff internationally. Uber might start to focus on winning the US but can they against a leaner, meaner, and more focused Lyft?
It's also the classic bundled vs individual components debate. Uber is bundled and Lyft is a component. Usually there's room in the market for both.
Lyft's subsidiary Motivate also operates a decent number of bikeshare systems.
I have no idea if it's a profitable venture for them - supposedly they're the "operating partner" which I guess means the actual owners pay them a fee to handle all the logistics while the owners themselves are responsible for the profit and loss of the system overall. Can anyone provide more detail here?
But how to get the money when VC money ended? The only way I see is to be more efficient on spending. Hint: taxi companies don't need 10k+ software engineers.
So their market is a race to the bottom. Which is a indicator of an effective market. Only non-effective markets have large profit margins.
Taxi companies don’t operate apps at global scales.
Consider that each country needs their own specialized team of engineers to deal with its own unique problems. Then you need reliability engineers, you need engineers building administrative tooling, payments, security, so much shit. You really do need thousands of engineers.
Actually no, there are companies [1] that sell whole ride-hailing infra, apps etc. Customers just customize them (logos/phones) and have their own Uber.
"Constantly present but at manageable levels" is the definition of endemic. The question is whether the levels are manageable. I would argue they're not. Most people seem to think they are.
I would argue that, if the US healthcare system is indeed on the brink of collapse, current community levels of COVID-19 are not the direct cause of that.
Years of mismanagement that were exposed by past peaks of COVID-19 levels? Sure. But that's here to stay even if every COVID virus particle evaporated tomorrow. Current COVID-19 levels are not a causative agent for the healthcare system and other things that make society run being on the brink of collapse.
I tried Lyft in San Antonio. App kept saying a driver was on the way, but they'd mysteriously never show up. Tried it again in Philadelphia. Same thing - was repeatedly left hanging. I don't know if Lyft actually had drivers on the way, but even if they did, I've used Uber since and never had a problem.
On Reddit, drivers are claiming that Uber pays surge pricing to drivers but Lyft pays a fixed hours plus mileage and takes the surge increase for itself. Is this true?
The one common thread is that neither Lyft nor Uber drivers have any idea how they get paid, or why they got paid $X instead of $Y even though the customer said they're paying $ZZ for the ride.
My anecdotal experience recently is that Uber is much better at communicating a lot of hand wavy reasons why it's not them that are impacting their net pay $random_government_entity taking all your money. Or I've just gotten some especially out there drivers recently.
I've had drivers who were renting cars to rideshare because their other one was totaled. These are often financially desperate people. Its a predatory situation. You need work and there's this entity handing out work on your own schedule, seems almost too good to be true because it is. Factor in that rental, factor in your car payment, factor in the tires, the maintenance, the gas, the newer model car you need to have for the job, the phone you need for the app to work, the cellphone plan to make that phone work for the job, the health insurance you need to pay for on your own, the unpaid breaks you have to take to pee or eat, and it probably doesn't look so nice.
Traditional shift work low skill labor jobs like fast food are honestly a better option. These days some fast food places are providing benefits, not to mention a path to management and therefore a higher wage. It's not like uber or lyft will ever promote you from driver.
Sounds about right from the chats I've had with Lyft drivers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a per-ride bonus somewhat like Doordash when they need drivers.
This supply/demand equation doesn't necessarily have to involve incentivising increased supply, maybe the increase in capacity from offering the difference to drivers isn't worth it compared to just profiting from the scarcity.
I think no but it doesn’t matter. If Uber is paying much higher wages for the same labor and you can switch over at the press of a button, why would anyone drive for Lyft during a surge?
I swore Uber off years ago. However I recently had 3 horrible experiences with Lyft in a row so now I’m back to Uber.
There’s so some type of scam where Lyft drivers accept a ride then don’t move. They try to get you to cancel and pay a $3 fee. If you wait long enough you can cancel for free. My last Lyft ride took multiple drivers and 30 minutes to arrive in downtown Seattle. So frustrating.
I’m sure other people have had similar and worse experiences with Uber. I’m sure I’ll rage quit them again before long.
I uninstalled Uber when Travis Kalanick's myriad improprieties came to light. I'm not ready to forgive the company, since its very existence is built on such despicable behavior. Sure they've made improvements blah blah, but I see no reason to go back. I hope Lyft survives for this reason alone.
I'm surprised that article doesn't discuss Uber Eats which brings in more revenue that the taxi part (called Mobility by Uber, both are 13b in the quarter that ended June 30, 2022 https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det... ). Lyft doesn't have this revenue.
My anecdotal experience last week is that Lyft's experience has fallen off a cliff. Even in SF it often takes 10 minutes to get a ride (not including the time for the driver to pick me up). Sometimes Lyft just leaves me hanging and can't find me any rides whatsoever. I'm gradually switching to Uber simply out of lack of confidence that Lyft will get me a ride in the timeframes I've been conditioned to expect based on past experience.
To be honest, I somehow believe that car service, delivery, and payment should have been an infrastructure like electricity and partially controlled or highly regulated by government.
Yeah, that works great. Like in east Germany, where the production of cars was limited by centralized production of parts that lead to waiting times of 10years+, if you wanted to purchase a car.
Many people were on those waiting lists and experienced the collapse of the USSR before they even got the chance.
Indeed, I do the same thing and most people I know do the same. The fact is that Lyft for me consistently has high prices and lower availability of drivers than Uber, so I use Uber. The network effect is strong with ridesharing companies.
Here's my anecdata. Every Uber/Lyft I've taken is clearly servicing both. Indicators range from multiple phones, one with each app running and multiple logos/stickers on the cars. I almost always ask the driver which they prefer. The consistent answer is they prefer working with Lyft better but Uber more consistently has rides for them to pick up. It's unclear whether they get paid better with Lyft or are otherwise treated better, but that is what they say every time.
I usually ask the same (and whether they prefer tip in cash etc); I have not seen a single person say they would rather drive for uber. It's been nearly 100% toward lyft preference. I ride daily.
> To be fair, the sexual discrimination and harassment is a problem all over Western culture, so it's weird to single out Uber that way.
Are you justifying its OK for Uber to have a horrendous culture that MULTIPLE sources identified has being atrocious because its 'common' in Western Culture?
The executive stealing a rape victims medical records occured in India, not a Western country.
Do you think culture changes overnight? 2017 was not that long ago. The first link goes back to then, I provided a small list because you asked for specific examples. It's a small list (but deep issues). How do people such short term memories. It's how the past repeats itself, no?
Lyft seems like a great candidate for Tesla to acquire and eventually replace with their autonomous fleet. But Elon is busy winning the culture wars atm.
There's little reason currently to think that fully autonomous vehicles are just around the corner, and even less reason to think that Tesla will be the company that gets there first, given the lack of LiDAR on Teslas. Musk's twitter gambit is focusing on the real engine of his wealth, public relations.
Indeed, meant to say he should acquire this if he's at all serious about the autonomous/robo taxi thing becoming a reality but we all know it's hot-air for the foreseeable future. But kind of the premise based on which these companies thought their unit economics would eventually work out.
Why would they spend billions on buying a taxi app? If they had an autonomous fleet (which they obviously won’t for a very long time), they could just build an app for that? That seems like a much smaller problem to solve than autonomous driving.
