Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion

Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion by Spooky23 on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @09:11PM (#11819644)

Über has enchanted the tech people. It's this golden goose that every conversation turns to. Listen to the Ben Thompson podcast -- if he was reacting to an article about ham sandwiches, he would tie it to Uber.

There's no reality here. No magic self driving electric taxis, no robot delivering your takeout.

18-24 months this thing will be like Groupon (remember they were magically saving writers by hiring thousands of them to copywrite Yoga Studio coupons) -- the insiders cash out, and the dumb money takes a bath.

That said, I thank the Saudis for subsidizing my next black car ride. God knows I've shipped $100k for gas to them over the last two decades.

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Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion by tracker1 on Wednesday June 01, 2016 @11:46PM (#11820225)

For those curious... 100k / 20 / 365 = $13/day, at $3/gallon (est) = 4.56 gallons * 20mpg (low gas milage) = 91 miles/day, or closer to 30mpg would be around 135miles/day, which I guess is possible. I was just thinking it seemed like a lot. Now, a fair amount of that is varying levels of taxes... but it's still significant amount.

I'm currently doing about 40 miles/day commute for work, and know people who are driving a lot farther than I am... while I was married, I'd drive about 140 miles to/from home on the weekends, staying in the city during the week, put many miles on my car and truck back then.

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Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion by lazaroclapp on Thursday June 02, 2016 @03:17AM (#11820882)

You are not counting consumption of plastics, electricity generated by oil, combustible used by construction vehicles building the roads and buildings he uses, etc. But even by that sort of accounting, $100K sounds like it was intended to be hyperbolic ;)

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Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion by blablablame on Thursday June 02, 2016 @10:23AM (#11822645)

Or have 2 cars (or god forbid, more if your kids drive) and include a few thousand mile trips here and there and it isn't very hard to get there.

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Re:Uber Turns to Saudi Arabia for $3.5B Cash Infusion by codecamper on Thursday June 02, 2016 @10:03AM (#11822501)

Saudis benefit from our 2 mid eastern wars. Total cost of wars? According to Brown U. just the Iraq war is 4.4 trillion. http://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/ That's a cost of $15,000 per person in the US.

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