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Message
re: Why does it seem so many automotive journalists are anti-Uber?
Posted on 10/25/17 at 12:53 pm to TigerFanatic99
Posted on 10/25/17 at 12:53 pm to TigerFanatic99
It will be curious to see if Uber makes their very expensive transition. They're underestimating the huge cost difference in going from an app provider that arranges transportation, placing all overhead, maintenance, upkeep on individual drivers, to the huge overhead and expenses of being a fleet operator of thousands of autonomous vehicles.
They're already not profitable with only software development as their primary expense, adding in the massive costs of buying/leasing expensive fleets of cars would seem to be impossible, unless you've got a lot of eager and uninformed investors to fund your boondoggle.
Mark Cuban already said you could buy literally every taxi license in the country and have billions left over for less than Uber's valuation.
They're already not profitable with only software development as their primary expense, adding in the massive costs of buying/leasing expensive fleets of cars would seem to be impossible, unless you've got a lot of eager and uninformed investors to fund your boondoggle.
Mark Cuban already said you could buy literally every taxi license in the country and have billions left over for less than Uber's valuation.
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Posted on 10/25/17 at 12:59 pm to TigerstuckinMS
Good luck to Uber being cheaper than your owning your own car, if Uber plans to buy/build their own autonomous car to maintain their service in the future.
Ignoring the personal freedom aspect, if Uber plans to incur the overhead of maintaining cars in the future, I just don't see how their cost to the consumer would ever be less than personal ownership, even with eliminating the cost of paying a driver.
Ignoring the personal freedom aspect, if Uber plans to incur the overhead of maintaining cars in the future, I just don't see how their cost to the consumer would ever be less than personal ownership, even with eliminating the cost of paying a driver.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 1:13 pm to Rand AlThor
When I was an Uber Driver I had quite a few regulars who could afford a car but just chose not to have one when there is a Driver literally minutes from you and it’s cheap. No note, insurance, registration, inspection sticker, tickets, road rage or any of that. They can take the commute time to check email, put on makeup, pray, whatever the frick they do.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 1:13 pm to busbeepbeep
One thing people aren't thinking about tho. Catastrophic events. When shite hits the fan people want their own car to be able to GTHO. I don't know if "Uber only" will ever be a thing in South Louisiana simply because people need to be able to evacuate.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 1:42 pm to YipSkiddlyDooo
quote:
You hear this all the time from the autonomous driving blowhards. Something about cars being parked 90% of the day. Im all for cars that will do all the work for me but the problem is with the assumption that more autonomy means drastically less cars. Cars may be parked 90% of the time but in a couple hours in the morning and again in the afternoon, 90% of cars are on the road as people go to and from work, drop off and pick up kids, etc. having 100 autonomous cars instead of 1000 personal vehicles can’t solve that problem...unless you are going to force certain companies/schools/medical offices/etc to adjust their hours of operation.
When you start your argument with an ad hominem attack, you usually don't have much of an argument.
Yes, rush hour lasts several hours, but not all those cars are on the road at the same time, there's just a lot of cars on the road for several hours. An autonomous car would make several trips during the several hour long rush hour, not just one. One car picks you up and brings you to work for 7. Then it picks up someone who lives near where you work and brings them to work for 8. Then it picks up another person that lives near that other business and brings them to work for 9. Three cars during peak times replaced by one. Of course, there wouldn't always be that drastic of a reduction in the peak number of cars required during rush hour, but there would be a reduction in the number of cars necessary to get everyone around.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 1:58 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 1:47 pm to TigerstuckinMS
I don't own a car and just uber/lyft everywhere.
With uber pool and lyft line + being able to work from home some days I would say I only spend about 50 bucks a week.
Plus with lyft you can get delta skymiles.
With uber pool and lyft line + being able to work from home some days I would say I only spend about 50 bucks a week.
Plus with lyft you can get delta skymiles.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 1:48 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 1:54 pm to GoIrish02
quote:
Ignoring the personal freedom aspect, if Uber plans to incur the overhead of maintaining cars in the future, I just don't see how their cost to the consumer would ever be less than personal ownership, even with eliminating the cost of paying a driver.
The possibility exists (and again, I absolutely think that getting that price below Average Joe's cost of privately owning the vehicle is crucial to getting large scale use and failure to do so torpedoes the idea) because of the economies of scale that an undertaking of that magnitude bring into play. If Uber is buying hundreds of thousands or millions of vehicles at a time, they're going to get much better pricing than you can. Their costs for oil and gasoline will be way lower than yours because they'd buying it by the tanker, not the tank. Maintenance costs plummet because they'd pay the mechanics and the shop's overhead directly when their cars need maintenance but you'd still be paying for the shop's profit on top of those costs when you need your car fixed. Their insurance costs would be way lower than yours per mile driven because they'd self-insure and only have to pay for accidents in which their car is at-fault, but the self-driving car would massively reduce the number of those accidents. You'd still be paying the pool rate to insure the far less reliable human drivers.
It's quite similar to how a giant operation like Enterprise takes advantage of its scale, but with more opportunities to shave costs.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 2:01 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 2:05 pm to TigerstuckinMS
Understanding the economies of scale, Uber still has / had to spend a lot more on autonomous cars' research & software development, plus all the same direct vehicle costs like Enterprise. I imagine autonomous cars will cost more than a Chevy Malibu.
And Uber has yet to be profitable without all those direct vehicle costs.
I've got a family member who is an executive at Enterprise, that company breaks even at best on the actual leasing business, their primary profit comes from their collision damage waiver sales.
It will be interesting to see if eliminating the driver to sell autonomous ride software is enough to offset the huge r&d costs, plus the carry forward of billions in current losses, as it is pretty clear the business of leasing cars won't be a profit center.
And Uber has yet to be profitable without all those direct vehicle costs.
I've got a family member who is an executive at Enterprise, that company breaks even at best on the actual leasing business, their primary profit comes from their collision damage waiver sales.
It will be interesting to see if eliminating the driver to sell autonomous ride software is enough to offset the huge r&d costs, plus the carry forward of billions in current losses, as it is pretty clear the business of leasing cars won't be a profit center.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 2:12 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 2:13 pm to GoIrish02
quote:
Understanding the economies of scale, Uber still has / had to spend a lot more on autonomous cars' research & software development, plus all the same direct vehicle costs like Enterprise. I imagine autonomous cars will cost more than a Chevy Malibu.
And Uber has yet to be profitable without all those direct vehicle costs.
I'm kind of envisioning that they'd just buy the autonomous car directly from a manufacturer, like you would, not develop in-house. Their costs would go up, but be offset in some part by no longer paying drivers. I'm also thinking more of an "X dollars per month" model, not "X dollars for this ride". Basically really pairing their user facing software/predictive tools/routing with autonomous vehicles.
quote:
I've got a family member who is an executive at Enterprise, that company breaks even at best on the actual leasing business, their primary profit comes from their collision damage waiver sales. I don't know if eliminating the driver is enough to offset the huge r&d costs, plus the carry forward of billions in current losses, as it is pretty clear the core leasing business won't be a profit center.
That's definitely one of the things I'm curious about. Will the economics of an autonomous fleet and the increased safety and reduction in loss and insurance costs be enough, paired with the economies of scale, to make it cheaper than direct ownership?
Of course, I guess there's nothing at all stopping the manufacturers themselves from just cutting someone like Uber out and doing the UI/predictive stuff/financials/etc. themselves.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 2:17 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 2:13 pm to GoIrish02
Jalopnik deadspin and their old friend gawker are liberal shite rag sites. Uber supported Trump...they mad.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 2:19 pm to GoIrish02
400/month car note
200/month insurnace
100/month maintenance (some years will be more, some less).
So 700 a month = 8400 a year.
15,000 miles a year at 30 MPG = 500 gallons of gas. 2.25 a gallon = That's another $1,125.
So let's call it $10,000 a year in car ownership costs.
Cost of ownership would be 67 cents a mile.
Now... it's going to be hard for Uber to compete with that. But... let's say you have to pay for parking at work, and you have to pay for parking at your home (maybe it's extra to park a car at an apartment complex). Let's add in the costs to park if you go out downtown a lot, parking meters and lots, etc.
You still probably come out cheaper with ownership. But it might be close. And if you can use the additional time spent not driving to be productive while being driven around... it might make sense for SOME people
200/month insurnace
100/month maintenance (some years will be more, some less).
So 700 a month = 8400 a year.
15,000 miles a year at 30 MPG = 500 gallons of gas. 2.25 a gallon = That's another $1,125.
So let's call it $10,000 a year in car ownership costs.
Cost of ownership would be 67 cents a mile.
Now... it's going to be hard for Uber to compete with that. But... let's say you have to pay for parking at work, and you have to pay for parking at your home (maybe it's extra to park a car at an apartment complex). Let's add in the costs to park if you go out downtown a lot, parking meters and lots, etc.
You still probably come out cheaper with ownership. But it might be close. And if you can use the additional time spent not driving to be productive while being driven around... it might make sense for SOME people
Posted on 10/25/17 at 3:23 pm to TigerstuckinMS
quote:
Of course, there wouldn't always be that drastic of a reduction in the peak number of cars required during rush hour,
Except rush hour and school start/end times will still be the rate limiting step. If you need 1000 autonomous cars to get people to work and kids to school during peak hours but only need 200 cars to get people around the rest of the time...you still need 1000 cars.
I'm not saying you couldn't get away with less cars using an automatic driving uber, but whenever someone uses the "cars are parked all the time and therefore we could get away with having 1/10th the number of cars on the road" I laugh. They never comment on the inevitable rush hour problem where a majority of personal cars are being used at one time.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 3:36 pm to TigerstuckinMS
'Murica is all about self determination, which is why people that don't grab for it are looked down on.
Personal cars are going to be way more than just an enthusiast's eccentricity for a long time.
Personal cars are going to be way more than just an enthusiast's eccentricity for a long time.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 4:32 pm to LSUFanHouston
quote:
Journalists are liberals. Liberals support big government causes. Journalists support heavy regulation. Taxis are heavily regulated. Uber is not. Uber is a direct threat to taxis.
Posted on 10/25/17 at 5:29 pm to weagle99
Think dude. Think
Posted on 10/25/17 at 5:48 pm to LSUFanHouston
These numbers will vary from person to person but it's way cheaper for me to own my car.
Car is paid off.
0$/month note
106$/month insurance
112$/month gas
100$/month maintenance
318$/month = 3816$/year
Appx 12k miles a year = 32¢/mile
Car is paid off.
0$/month note
106$/month insurance
112$/month gas
100$/month maintenance
318$/month = 3816$/year
Appx 12k miles a year = 32¢/mile
Posted on 10/25/17 at 5:52 pm to YipSkiddlyDooo
Except for the fact rush hour doesn't include all persons going to work that day or at that time, and therefore there are tons of cars in driveways not going anywhere even during rush hour, not to mention those belonging to students or retirees.
So yes, you would need enough cars for peak demand, that is still a fraction and a savings compared to all the cars not doing shite during rush hour.
And if remote work continues it's climb, the math starts to look better and better.
So yes, you would need enough cars for peak demand, that is still a fraction and a savings compared to all the cars not doing shite during rush hour.
And if remote work continues it's climb, the math starts to look better and better.
This post was edited on 10/25/17 at 5:53 pm
Posted on 10/25/17 at 7:38 pm to LSU alum wannabe
I can't see them hurting the car industry. People in nyc and chicago still have cars and taxis are everywhere there.
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