OT: Uber expects to lose $3 billion this year
- Thread starter rutgersdave
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In theory yes but outside of Manhattan I don't know where else the service is available. Download the app "Uber Eats".
I'm not denying that there is a trend toward declining car ownership among the young. It correlates with the trends of young adults living with their parents longer, living in cities longer, getting married later, and starting families later. But the young adults eventually get married, have kids, and move to less urban areas where they have more space to raise kids. And when they do that, they'll need cars.
First, they'll need transportation (or mobility, if you prefer), not cars.
And none of your classic stereotypes explains the apathy toward car ownership, which is a new phenomenon. 20 years ago and beyond, kids were genuinely excited to get their license. They were in fact still living with their parents, too ... only they wanted to get their own car and not have to rely on those parents ... or stick around in the same house with them. Today, they have a different attitude toward driving than you, me or 1960s muscle car masochists.
Those stereotypes also doesn't explain why driver's licenses have declined across age ranges.
Nor do they change the fact that automakers are actively reshaping strategies. Watch the automotive news that comes out of CES, which btw has replaced the Detroit show just days later as the first major auto show of the year, next month, and tell me automakers are still plugging along waiting for darned millennials to settle down and start filling their driveways with minivans, family sedans and SUVs. Honda announced today it will be showing a "cooperative mobility ecosystem." The Chinese company backing Faraday Future, which will reveal its first car there, has already spoken of a non-ownership, ad/subscription-style revenue model.
So, we get to the point where these kids who never really wanted cars and don't have driver's licenses become responsible suburbanites. There are now self-driving cars, ride-sharing programs everywhere, car-sharing services, subscription options, myriad last-mile transporters, more public transit, cooperative mobility ecosystems and more. These kids who never really cared about cars or driver's licenses are suddenly going to reverse course, en masse, and fit into some late-90's world?
Anyway, the point is simply that posters here are looking at technological shifts as if they're going to be linear - Uber gets fleet of self-driving cars and continues to fill the same taxi-style niche, only with no drivers - when they are actually moving toward something much more three-dimensional and seismic. Fleeting suspicion ... Uber's greater plan incorporates three-dimensional shifts, not linear ones.
Did you advise someone (or yourself) against investing in Uber or something? You seem to be trying awfully hard to make the facts and future fit a preordained conclusion.
Yeah, but not in the last 20 years. I basically gave up acting as pilot in command on any aircraft after we had kids. Ya get to where you're only getting about 100 hours a year worth of stick time and you run the risk of being JFK Jr. The wiser course of action is to walk away.
We're looking at the same data and drawing different conclusions. I see a trend of young adults starting families later, along with a trend of young adults living in urban areas (which is trend that goes back to the decline of urban flight in the 1970s, whether you want to call it Yuppification or gentrification). People living in urban centers have less of a need for cars than people in suburban or rural areas (although the rate of car ownership in NYC has been steadily increasing). But I believe that when today's young adults do start families, they'll move away from urban centers at rates comparable to previous generations, and I draw the conclusion that they will own cars at comparable rates as well. You are drawing the conclusion that they will continue to eschew cars. I guess we'll find out in 20 years.
However, I do agree that technology will change the face of urban transportation options. I agree that self-driving taxi/uber would be an option vs traditional taxi/uber and vs mass transit in NYC or Philadelphia. I don't agree that it is an option vs private car in Montclair or East Brunswick.
But I am not convinced that Uber's business plan is sound. Once they launch a fleet of self-driving cars, what is to prevent someone else doing it too. ZipCar already has a market in car sharing; all they have to do is share self-driving cars. Uber does not have any unique technology, so they don't have a technological advantage. Uber has no experience in owning fleets (their current model has each driver owning their own car), so they're unlikely to gain a cost advantage over experienced fleet operators, or the car manufacturers themselves. Whatever model Uber introduces can be copied almost immediately by someone who can do it as well, and possibly cheaper.
So great, let Uber fight the regulatory battles. And once that is done, Avis, Enterprise, ZipCar, Ford, or GM can move in and operate their fleets better and cheaper. (Or what I think is more likely, you have local fleet operators who use a common, low-cost app to manage hails, the same way independent restaurants use Open Table to manage reservations.)
I heard the same from BMW - they are looking at new business models that doesn't involve out ownership but still provides the necessary revenue streams to keep up their R & D spend where it is.
Saw a commercial featuring a driverless car... father talking to son saying while looking at his phone.. "you didn't get the brakes checked".. kid admits it.. then he taps on his phone some more.. turns out, he is telling the car to drive itself to the auto shop to get checked out.. and the kids asks if he can take the car when it gets back.
I can see all sorts of uses for driverless cars like this.. go to the drive-thru window at a fast food place and bring me back a meal.. go pick up a grocery order I just placed... you driverless car is not just a chauffeur, it is an assistant. Hmmm.. google's alexa-like AI is called "google assistant"... interesting days ahead.
As for car ownership.. here is Rutgers' own and Ford's Mark Fields on car ownership
I can see all sorts of uses for driverless cars like this.. go to the drive-thru window at a fast food place and bring me back a meal.. go pick up a grocery order I just placed... you driverless car is not just a chauffeur, it is an assistant. Hmmm.. google's alexa-like AI is called "google assistant"... interesting days ahead.
As for car ownership.. here is Rutgers' own and Ford's Mark Fields on car ownership
Unfortunately so will terrorists. Pack them with C4. Go to mall parking garage. Will be interesting for sure. Personally I hope it never happens.
I agree, that data is invaluable. But it doesn't make it a clear advantage for Google which was your original argument and thesis. If it's a clear advantage Google would have a lot of pseudo-autonomous vehicles out on the roads, rather than the reality, which is a few driving up and down the 101 in Silicon Valley. Uber has just as much data related to where people travel, when, routes taken, and payment behavior.
The end game is building autonomous vehicles to make the movement of humans and hard assets more efficient. If you want to do that you need LIDAR data, and to collect that you need cars on the road that you control. Uber, and Tesla even to a greater extent, have substantially more data in that regard than Google.
How is that any different than what could happen today? Guy parks car, gets out and leaves.
That is an interesting and scary thought. Tough there are other ways to so similar things... drones, RC vehicles.. its a question of quantity... and maybe you'll need a diverless truck to deliver enough explosives to make a big difference. Maybe the vehicles need sniffer devices to prevent such things.. record video to a cloud of things being placed inside them... perhaps computer vision can analyze live video and bring interesting cases to some human monitor who then stops the vehicle until she checks it out (remotely or otherwise).
Seriously? Google has movement data from everyone who uses Google Maps or Waze, plus data from everyone with a mobile phone who doesn't opt out of location tracking (which is pretty much everyone). Google has data on just about everyone related to where they travel, when they travel, and routes taken. Uber only has data from people when they take Uber. Uber's data says that 80% of trips are to bars on Saturday night and to the airport during the week.
I should have clarified, data for the intent to develop autonomous vehicles. Google has loads of data, not disagreeing with that. But Google's data as an advantage over Uber or Tesla for the purpose of developing vehicles, I argue is not a real advantage.
The data would be useful in setting up a car-share business to deploy the vehicles.
I'm not sure how the data you referenced ("data related to where people travel, when, routes taken, and payment behavior") would be used to develop vehicles.
Driverless vehicles would operate by sensing their surroundings and making decisions based on that. Collecting historical data is of no value. I don't want my car to go through an intersection because the database indicates there is no stop sign. I want the car to sense the existence of the stop sign that was installed yesterday and come to a stop.
Yep, all interesting ideas. Also a lot of focus on making the car a package drop-off point for UPS, etc. Have a built-in storage box with digital access code so UPS can drop it there - you could even give it the okay and a signature from your phone. Car "uber-ing" itself to make you money while you sit in work (there's an argument v uber and for car ownership). Perhaps the wildest I've seen is a concept car with docking drone - the drone swoops around running errands for you while the self-driving car rolls to your destination. So instead of stopping to pickup wine for a dinner party, the drone will just meet you with it along the way.
Other stuff being developed/played with - car will calculate exactly when you need to leave based on route and traffic, send reminders, pre-warm and adjust settings automatically around your schedule (e.g. playing "pump up" music before dropping you at the gym), suggest restaurants and make dinner reservations, automatically turn on the (smart) home heat/lights as you approach, etc. etc.
Alright, that clarifies your position well. I don't have any comment on Uber specifically and agree it may end up being someone else to capitalize.
I do believe "regulations" will be more a tool than an impediment, though. Companies have been getting individual permits for testing their self-driving cars for years now. Following that model, once the tech and regulations are ready for fully legal self-driving cars, a company like Uber gets an exclusive permit to operate in a city like San Francisco. Then it stays at the head of the curve in doing so elsewhere, made easier by the fact it has real-world experience. Uber is already testing heavily automated (still have backup drivers) Volvos in a few cities, including San Francisco, added within the past week or so. So if one of those cities - or any city - looks to contract with a self-driving taxi service, is it going to contract with an unknown startup full of bright-eyed college dropouts or the household name who can point to its multi-city in-field trials? I'm guessing, at first, cities won't want a bunch of different operations running self-driving cars all over the place, and they have the responsibility, not just the right, to regulate the industry as they see fit. No reason to believe that they won't move slowly and limit permits to one or two companies.
All just a thought, but seems like the kind of play a forward-thinking company would be making while everyone else is waiting for governments to legislate them away in favor of big, yellow taxis of old.
As for the ownership question, eventually, I believe self-driving tech will lead to human driving being straight outlawed, which will really be one of the last nails for car ownership. The human driver is really the wrench in the whole system, once it's up and running in totality. Don't think that will happen for decades and decades, though, once traditional cars have been cycled out of existence.
You're right that the current Uber model combined with self-driving sedans probably won't be convenient or cost-effective for most suburban commuters. But what about an autonomous public point-to-point bus service? Buses pick you up at your doorstep and drop you off at your destination, regularly or on-demand, however you need. Sounds inefficient at first, but once they gather enough data on commuting patterns, coupled with the inherent efficiencies of self-driving systems, combined with a fleet of different size/capacity vehicles, it could very quickly prove more efficient than sending huge, half-empty buses looping around and stopping at vacant benches.
There's a young concept out there that uses small individual "neighborhood pods" that do the single pickups, link up like train cars into larger local and regional buses to improve efficiency for the meat of the route, then split off individually again for dropoffs. I believe the company is a spinoff off a major Chinese automaker, but not positive. That's just one of many designs currently in some stage of ideation, development or physical trial.
Love that car with drone thing.. had not thought of that. I have heard of a shoulder mounted drone to be your eyes in the sky... for action cams, maybe scouting ahead for soldiers.. or for hikers in bear country.. I have thought that your home might have a drone to run errands. But that would be a lot of drones... probably better for the stores to send their drones to you. Amazon tests have landing pads in customers yards. A pizza delivery drone seems like a sure bet sometime soon... especially in rural locations with few roads. In New Jersey, we usually have lots of options to get from point A to point B.. that is not true everywhere. Drones could be useful in avoiding bottlenecks and such. Emergency delivery of pharma stuff.. also sound like a sure thing. The amazon drones can deliver 5 pound packages.. that's probably 2 thin crust pizzas... one costco giant pizza. The question is.. how much does the energy cost of the average flight.. how long to recharge it... what is the lifespan of the drone and its batteries.
Anyway.. back to your post..
You can do some of that music automation stuff now at home with an Alexa or Google Home. I am playing around now with Google Home and IFTTT and Wemo switches to put voice control on some devices. And you can use api.ai and home assistant to start getting into more sophisticated automatons.
An example of the simple stuff.. some of the kids coming over for xmas will have some phrases google home will recognize.. like "What does (kids name) smell like?" and google will answer "poop poop poopy poop".. the kid's gonna love that. But you can them make phrases like that trigger any number of actions using IFTTT which stand for If This Then That... and you can chain that stuff to make interesting combinations like you mentioned... as long as you use smart devices.. example.. the Belkin Wemo switches are supported in IFTTT.. the first switch I bought is a TPLink and that is not supported.. though Alexa has native support for it. But what I really need to do is replace some key light switches with smart switches... then I can have all sorts of "programs" based on location of my phone, time of day/sun.. and then integrate with nest cameras, thermostat, sprinkler controls that use the internet to check precip forecasts to save water.... the smart home is very possible and integrating that with smart cars.. entirely possible sometime soon.
Maybe your smart house (really meaning your "internet of things" inside your home) knows you actually got out of bed in the morning and turns on your coffee machine and TV to the morning. Maybe it checks the weather and tells your car to start and turn on the heater to clear frost.. if you parked outside and not in the garage.. or if you don't own a car, maybe it calls an uber for you... or asks you if you want an uber..
cool stuff comin'
Are the length of posts in this thread growing exponentially?
Much like a courtesy flush, sometimes you need to just slap on some tl;dr's for everyone's sake.
Much like a courtesy flush, sometimes you need to just slap on some tl;dr's for everyone's sake.
