And my friends in NYC or Chicago don't use Uber because they can just hail a cab. Five minutes is "high liquidity?" If it takes me five minutes to hail a cab here in downtown Philly, I'm having a bad day!
And my friends in NYC or Chicago don't use Uber because they can just hail a cab. Five minutes is "high liquidity?" If it takes me five minutes to hail a cab here in downtown Philly, I'm having a bad day!
As more and more young people are moving into the cities again, especially cities in the sunbelt that lack the public transit and availability of cabs of NY/Chicago, there's huge opportunity for uber. When you consider all the people now moving back into downtowns and wanting to live the urban walkable lifestyle, but in cities with subpar transit, the opportunity is massive.
I think you're just plain overestimating the demographic trends actually in play. Yes, there is some growth in urban areas, but we're talking very marginal ones here: http://www.city-journal.org/2011/eon0406jkwc.html. There's no demographic trend of a major shift to the cities that will create a "massive" opportunity for a company like Uber.
Did you read the post's suggestions that Uber (and ZipCar, RelayRides, etc) enable getting rid of secondary or even primary cars (in fact, it's already happening)?
Again, your post is highly myopic to the unusual situation of San Francisco. Its a place that's dense enough for people to mostly forgo cars but without sufficiently good transit to allow them to forgo a car entirely. In the vast majority of the country, you'd have to reduce Uber's costs by an order of magnitude to compete with personal autos. And you're not doing that without self-driving cars.
You could get there with self-driving cars, but I don't see Uber uniquely positioned to capture that market. The companies developing the technology, like Google, will make all the money in that space.
And you don't have to engage in the biggest time-waster of all time: driving.
Your example about forgoing a second car totally misses the mark. Families have multiple cars in the suburbs for one of three reasons: 1) householders need them to commute; 2) stay at home spouses need them for school drop-offs and errands; and 3) teenagers need them to go to school, friends' houses, and after school activities.
Uber is not a practical replacement for any of these core functions. The average commute in Metro Atlanta is 17.5 miles and 30 minutes, or $30 each way on Uber X. A stay at home spouse will generally make shorter trips, but more of them. Two trips per weekday to pick up/drop off kids at school, and potentially several more for errands and after-school activities. Moreover, most of these will be multi-hop: drop the kids at school then drive to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, then drive to the Costco to get groceries, then drive to Giant to get stuff you don't need to buy in bulk, etc. Teenagers with cars will take several trips per day as well, to/from school and to after-school activities.
There's a reason that the U.S. has almost as many personal autos as people old enough to drive them. In most of the U.S. you can't even leave the house without driving, and unless you only leave the house once every other day to go to a place within 10 miles (which is nothing in terms of suburban distances), you'll spend vastly more on Uber than on a personal auto.
You're right, no one said it will replace a lot of commuting (although I know of a number of people who do commute via Uber). I know lots of families that have 3 cars and only 2 drivers with the third car serving for certain functions. I can easily see Uber nipping into that situation.
Not really.
You just seem to be taking half a dozen suggestions by a 'Series A investor and board member at Uber', some of which are anecdotal, 4 out of 6 of which hinge on the San Francisco or NYC and treating them as universally applicable facts while trying to boil a whole range of human preference down to simple math.
It's all pretty myopic, just as the parent suggests.
You might have a look at Uber's open job list. This service is going to (continue to) work in a huge number of locales. https://www.uber.com/jobs/list