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Comment by emodendroket | Hacker News Reader

Well, the idea is that they kill off every competing service and then can raise prices. Also that they can beat everyone else to self-driving cars and eliminate the cost of labor. Other articles on NC have called the feasibility of both of those into question.

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> Also that they can beat everyone else to self-driving cars and eliminate the cost of labor.

Or ask for regulations, something which apparently is disliked by them (and million others) in the self-driving space:

https://www.popsci.com/self-driving-car-fleets

And today, a coalition of companies—including Lyft, Uber, and Zipcar—officially announced that they were signing on to a 10-point set of “shared mobility principles for livable cities”........that autonomous vehicles (AVs) in dense urban areas should be operated only in shared fleets.”

Uber seeking to use regulation to shut out competitors is rich.

Sounds like a terrible idea given that this would just open the door for another company to do the same to them. They don't produce anything novel which can't easily be replicated.

Except there is a network effect. You will have to lower the cost for both; passengers and drivers for them to switch. Most of passengers I know, use one app, either Uber or Lyft. I don't know which one is cheaper but no one seems to compare prices even if they had both apps on their phone.

The way I see is that once Uber is a monopoly, it will start using advertisement model to subsidize rides. Should be easy enough, after requesting a ride at full cost, you can watch 5 minutes of videos until your ride gets there to get 10% discount. Or they can ask drivers to put tablets playing ads in their cars. They have history of places you visit, they can probably show highly targeted ads. "Going to a bar in downtown, checkout this other bar on the same street."

Once they acquire a dominant position, the cost to assail it will be astronomical. It already is in fact, which is why Lyft is burning so much cash just in the US market alone ($3 to $4 billion in red ink just in the US).

You're going to have to convince venture capitalists to put in $10 or $15 billion and be willing to watch it all burn, on the nearly impossible task of unseating the market winner. That will never happen. That is not how VCs operate. Which is why Google search has gone almost entirely unchallenged by VC over the last decade, despite being an extraordinary cash cow.

The reason there isn't another Uber competitor getting $7 billion in VC across multiple rounds in the US right now, is the same exact reason there won't be another Uber after the dust settles.

You are making the incorrect assumption that a company has to try to compete with Uber everywhere all at once. They don't. Once Uber raises prices to the point where they make a profit, cabs will just come back and undercut them - because they will have less expenses (they don't have to support a massive organization and shareholders). This will happen independently in every city.

I don't have to compete with them globally from the start. I compete in one market, then two, then...

There's no lock-in here. "Oh, some other service cropped up in my area and the rides are 50% that of Uber's? Ok, I'll download a new app"

I don't think any of this nonsense is sustainable.

I didn't say it was a good plan.

Sure, I get that it's not _your_ idea

I think this depends on your definition of "competing service." Some think "Taxis/Limos," others expand to public transit, and others expand to personal car ownership in general.

We shall see, but until them I'm definitely enjoying the VC subsidized taxi trips :)

Well, I'm sure Uber would like to replace as many of those as possible, but even the minimal version of replacing traditional livery services may not be possible.

I think the idea was that they’d soon have automation, but that’s clearly not coming soon enough to save their bacon.

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