Uber?

I took an uber ride to the airport today
The driver just does uber on his daily commute.
Tells uber his commute route and uber sets him up with rides not far out of his way while on his way to work and back home after his regular job

Quote: terapined

I took an uber ride to the airport today
The driver just does uber on his daily commute.
Tells uber his commute route and uber sets him up with rides not far out of his way while on his way to work and back home after his regular job

I have a buddy that does exactly that. His workplace is about 22 miles from his home so he will turn on the app after work and start driving home. If he gets a pickup on the way he is happy, if not he didn't spend any extra money driving around.

Uber Hires Veteran NASA Engineer to Develop Flying Cars

This makes me lose my faith in Uber and if I had money in it I would try to cash out. The automated cars are bad enough, but with this Uber is showing all the signs of a tech company who is ignoring basic business to do tech for the sake of doing tech.

If Uber goes BK the bones at this point are worth enough that someone will pump money into it. But time may be here for them to get out of the SF area and relocate somewhere they are not tempted to ignore the basic business.

The whole idea is that the basic business of uber is and always has been in doubt: taxi company, info sharing company, transportation company?

Quote: Fleastiff

The whole idea is that the basic business of uber is and always has been in doubt: taxi company, info sharing company, transportation company?

They do seem more and more to not know what business they are in. The autonomous car thing itself is disturbing. You have a large pool of drivers willing to work on commission meaning your fleet cost is $0. So you want to dump tens of millions or more so you can have your own fleet of cars on your own balance sheet? All on tech that is realistically two decades away?

Now this flying car thing! Flying cars would be cool, until you get more than a very small number up there, then it becomes just the fantasy it really it.

Uber is doing what Bezos did with Amazon,
he dumped every dime of profit back into
growing the business and was in the red
for years. But he knew what he was doing,
Uber does not.

Quote: AZDuffman

They do seem more and more to not know what business they are in. The autonomous car thing itself is disturbing. You have a large pool of drivers willing to work on commission meaning your fleet cost is $0. So you want to dump tens of millions or more so you can have your own fleet of cars on your own balance sheet? All on tech that is realistically two decades away?

Now this flying car thing! Flying cars would be cool, until you get more than a very small number up there, then it becomes just the fantasy it really it.

I'll get excited about Uber's core business when they turn a profit with it. They haven't yet, are burning cash, and take far too much of the pie as a management fee. Most of the gig economy style businesses are taking far too much out as their fees, if you ask me, without providing true value for the long term. 30% is fine if you are an occasional jobber, but if this is your full time gig, and your providing a service to Uber by being available, it's a massive cut of the action for something that was meant to be removing a middle man. Effectively they've removed the middle man who provide the cab and pays for maintenance, but kept the middle man who does dispatch... but haven't exactly passed on too much of the savings.

Fiverr is the same. 20% cut for a irregular gig is great. But I'd I'm doing $5,000+ per month of creative gig work, taking $1,000 out of that pie is not sustainable long term (I'm not even close to that, but if I'd not be happy to see so much of my take going out the door for 'marketing' on every job).

Yet ANOTHER Uber driver is arrested for going
back to a home he just picked up at and
stealing whatever he can carry away. I've
read about half a dozen of these, imagine
how many are getting away with it. Uber
will hire any schlub with a car. This time it
was a Muslim named Saddam. Cab drivers
never do this, they have too much to lose.
They also drive a car that has TAXI plastered
all over it, kind of conspicuous.

http://6abc.com/news/police-uber-driver-arrested-for-burglarizing-customers-homes/1759634/

Don't know if this was discussed already or not, but heard on the radio this morning about a man sueing Uber because he used his wife's phone once but Uber kept sending her phone Uber receipts and she saw he was visiting his mistress and divorced him.

Uber's use of driverless cars and flying cars is to embrace the cutting edge.... why be saddled with these hordes of cranky drivers who can "select" fares when Uber can send a driverless car that won't protest.

Flying car... Dubain soon will have a driverless flying car shuttle.

Quote: Fleastiff

Uber's use of driverless cars and flying cars.

Never gonna happen in our lifetime.
When the majority are driven by
humans, it won't work. If they are
all driven by computer, then you have
something. That's decades away, if ever.