They acquired those customers by burning billions of dollars to deliver rides below the cost of providing them.
Then they raised prices beyond their competition to account for their ridiculous overheads.
That is exaggerated. Uber was losing something like $0.50-$1 per ride in 2018.
Uber/Lyft were (and still mostly are) just _better_ than taxis.
I don’t know if I trust Ubers numbers on this. I don’t know what they’re counting as “cost per ride”. Does engineers salaries factor into that? What about data centers? Advertising?
If you factor all of it in, then they’re losing billions.
Well, yes. However, the impact of that on the ride cost is exaggerated.
> Does engineers salaries factor into that? What about data centers? Advertising?
Yes.
> If you factor all of it in, then they’re losing billions.
And when you divide it by the number of rides, you get into sub-$1 figures.
That type of ride from a "hub" where a bunch of taxis congregate to take the next passenger -- such as SEATAC airport -- is optimal for traditional taxis and can be cheaper. But using Uber for suburb-to-suburb routes away from any hubs is cheaper than taxis and I tried to explain why that happens: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30660517
I can wholeheartedly understand complaints about Uber and Lyft, but I don't understand at all when I sometimes see this collective amnesia about how much taxis sucked before rideshare came on the scene.
Every Uber or Bolt can also operate as a taxi since the regulations stipulate that any private passenger transport service is the same as a taxi, and has to follow the same regulations.
