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Comment by BinaryIdiot | Hacker News Reader

Right? This is what I don't understand. Everyone keeps saying the only way they make money is with autonomous cars but they're not even close with being able to do that (probably 5 years, at a minimum, and that's in small select areas).

With such a high burn rate, what are they going to do? From everything I read they're not like Amazon where they can just "turn on" monetization unless they're going to hike up their prices.

So, why would anyone invest in this stock long term? What am I missing?

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When autonomous cars arrive, Uber is toast. The only actually useful moat they have is experience in managing drivers. When that goes away, car manufacturers, or even private car owners, will just flood the streets just like scooters or bike rentals now.

It will just be a rather simple yet massive capital investment to put those cars on the streets, something that large, traditional companies with their far better financing terms will easily dominate.

This is my thinking as well. If you can manufacture cars you can make them cheaper than anyone could ever buy them. So, if I'm a car company, I'm buying someone (or building in house, whichever looks more likely to succeed; hell maybe even both!) who can handle making the cars drive themselves.

Then you have two businesses; you manufacture cars to sell to people and you have a service arm that handles an Uber / Taxi like service with driverless cars.

>...unless they're going to hike up their prices.

I assume that's what any company like this does eventually once they've captured enough of the market.

Anecdotal but I've definitely found alternative transit when the prices were too much. I'm not going to pay $20 more for a ride if I can just take the bus for 20 extra minutes transit time. There's a tradeoff.

Right but they haven't yet. Lyft is big in the US and most cities / towns in the US and across the globe have small start-ups doing similar ride sharing.

Does Uber have enough market to hike their prices yet? Will it before it runs out of money? If they're IPOing I feel like they have to think they can do this, I just don't get the how.

I used only Uber for probably 3+ years. On a recent business trip (where I wasn't even the one paying the bill in the end), Uber hit me with some ridiculous quote for a fare from Orlando airport to the convention hotel. That was the moment I downloaded Lyft, took the ride for a far more reasonable price and now I regularly cross-shop the two. Many drivers drive for both, so it's not even that different a wait time or experience.

You can shear a sheep many times, but skin them only once.

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