Just for-instance, Boston Metrocab has had a functioning app since at least 2012.
It: 1) Does the same ride-hailing as Uber, in the same way, with real-time GPS locations of your cab. 2) Did not, last time I checked, did auto-pay the way uber does. Is this a hard-to-replicate feature? 3) Are reasonably clean. I find BMC cabs about as clean as Uber; NYC cabs dirtier. 4) Circular reasoning. "Taxis can't do better because they can't do better."
Really, only point 2 is valid, and it's been replicated by other competitors (e.g., Lyft).
So what's Uber's moat?
Oh, yes, unsustainably low prices.
When I travel to a city Uber is available. When I travel to a suburban location near a city, Uber is available. There are dozens of different small-time cab companies and regional livery companies none of whom have an app, so they must either hire too few drivers and become overbooked or have drivers sit idle.
The last few times I've tried to book a black car they have been sold out. The time before that the car that showed up had no seatbelts, the driver seemed drunk, and my female companion was seriously creeped out by the experience.
Uber creates a regional market and lets anyone compete. If you drive to the city every day for a normal 9 to 5 job, you can pick up a fare on the way in and on the way home and likely offset most of the monthly car payment. There is just no way to compare traditional taxi/livery with what Uber offers.
One time my Uber driver was griping about how he'd bought his Cadillac before Uber launched and did not make enough money to justify the purchase, since few Uber riders opted for the premium vehicle option.
While this is too bad for him, it shows how misaligned the black car industry was. He thought he had to buy an $80K car in order to make money, but he could have bought a $20K car. For many other people, Uber has made this choice obvious and they can now save or invest that other $60K however they choose (or not be slaves to the debt for that extra few years).
Keep in mind too that Uber was forced to include Taxis in its app for years, essentially training the entire industry how to be modern. In a fair competition Uber would have won handily in its first year or two in business.
But it is the supreme unfairness of the competition that drives Uber's valuation. It's not every day that someone walks in and overturns a massive, corrupt industry on a worldwide scale.
I'm proud to have heard Travis speak at Startup School a few years ago, and I think that we should all try not to forget just how incredible Uber's achievement has been and how many peoples' lives have been made significantly better by Uber's existence.
In New York, every taxi is now hailable from a smartphone app that shows me the current locations of nearby taxis and reliably gets me one in 3-5 minutes from most places in the city.
> Nobody used to Uber will want to waste time taking out a credit card and swiping it through a dirty slot or handing it to a driver only to wait several minutes for it to finally go through.
Even if I don't hail a taxi from the app, the screen inside the car shows a code that I can use to associate my app's payment account after I get in the car. (Also, the real problem here is drivers claiming the credit card machine broke, but that's stopped happening.)
> Compared to the average Uber vehicle, most taxis are filthy and full of all sorts of odors.
You need to clarify what market you're in. Not NYC, surely.
> The taxi/livery industry is simply too used to enjoying a monopoly business to be able to fix itself.
It fixed itself in NYC, and if it can fix itself there it can fix itself anywhere.
Seriously. I do credit Uber and Lyft with making the taxi industry realize that they're doing things wrong and have an easily-eatable lunch, but they're figuring things out. I'm more curious about places (like the college town I grew up in) that have Uber service but barely any taxi service.
I attempted to use a similar system to the one you described in vancouver where there is no ride sharing it basically failed to work at all and I had to resort to the old "call a taxi company and wait indiscriminate amount of minutes." At least their credit card systems worked which as you said is a common issue in taxis here too (I have several times had a mexican standoff with taxi drivers here until their machines magically started working).
Absolutely true. And it's worth noting that Gavin Newsom got his start in politics as SF Taxi Commissioner.
It's hard to estimate the scale of under-the-table dealings or the amount of money taxi companies skimmed from the system before Uber came in and imposed order.
Uber essentially provided oxygen in a market that had been strangled for so long by corrupt public/private deals.
As a New Yorker, what? Every Uber car over ever been in has been far far cleaner and nicer. There isn't even a close comparison.
The advertisement video loop is also a major detractor.
Typical NYC cab rides involve the driver exchanging heated language with other drivers, rude gestures, etc., and drivers frequently pretend to be naive about the best way to get from point A to point B.
Climate control systems in cabs are usually broken, and there's a thin film of human oil covering every surface.
I mean, you are, in the dictionary sense of disrupting - you're messing it up. But in the Silicon Valley sense, this disruption is going to last right until the money runs out and then disappear without a trace. Uber will be a cautionary tale along the lines of Kozmo or Pets.com.
Yeah I'd call that disrupted. If they don't survive it IDGAF.
- Nobody who lives in a market that Uber serves will ever be willing to go back to the old way of calling a taxi dispatch line by phone, waiting on hold, and being told the cab will arrive in "five to thirty minutes". Seriously. Think about this.
- Nobody used to Uber will want to waste time taking out a credit card and swiping it through a dirty slot or handing it to a driver only to wait several minutes for it to finally go through.
- Compared to the average Uber vehicle, most taxis are filthy and full of all sorts of odors.
- The taxi/livery industry is simply too used to enjoying a monopoly business to be able to fix itself.
Uber has already won, and all these stories about Uber's culture, Uber's approach to dealing with regulators, etc., are one last attempt by those who dislike Uber to gang up on it and do it harm.
Taxi and livery services, medallions, and all the corruption that goes with them are on the way out. The stories we should be reading would be about immigrants scammed by Taxi companies working in violation of medallion laws, or about the cost of an NYC medallion that keeps non-rich people from making money driving.
I don't think Uber's prices are subsidized enough that if the subsidy went away demand would be significantly altered.
Simply having an intelligent app tell drivers where to expect fares and allowing easy booking and payment ads significant value to every ride that far outweighs the small dollar subsidy Uber invests to try to win market share.
I personally use Uber far more often than I would ever take a Taxi, largely because of the incredible convenience that the app offers and the high quality of the service.
While Uber's culture could probably use some improvement, it's irritating to see everyone piling on and trying to harm one of the firms that has done the most to democratize labor and empower individuals.