Many of my friends open both Lyft and Uber. They choose whichever is cheaper. Sure, Lyft might take a few more minutes to arrive. If you time it well ahead, it does not cost you more time. For me, I would rather take Lyft even if it is a little more expensive and takes a little longer. I hope Lyft catches up and makes it a real competition, which benefits consumers eventually.

In Australia we only have Uber and taxis. Nobody is switching to taxis because of a 10% price increase. Because most people are using Uber for the fact that they will always come, always pick you up and always drop you off at the right spot.

So it's fantastic that Lyft is doing okay in the US. But Uber is playing a whole different game.

This is incorrect. We have had private hire vehicles in Australia for years. Many of them are now also taking rides via Uber, but I've had black sedans to/from the airport for as long as I can remember.

The only things Uber add to the service mix is an app and a bad attitude, neither of which create any value for me.

I've never heard of private hire cars being used by consumers and ordinary people sure as hell aren't using them to goto the pub or shopping centre and back.

What Uber brings to the table isn't high end hire cars but rather UberX which is a game changer for price and quality. Finally taxis can't refuse to take you somewhere or not use the GPS. And not sure how you had a "bad attitude" experience given how seriously drivers take their ratings.

Let me correct you. I am a consumer and I use private hire cars, because I value their professionalism, cleanliness and punctuality which comes for a very modest premium.

This often surprises Australians, so if you are one of them you're not alone. In my view Australia has a culturally ingrained reverse snobbery, which leads to false judgements about value and utility.

The "bad attitude" I believe is clearly attributed to Uber, not their independent not-employees-at-all contractors, whose exploitation, low income, and zero benefits I have some limited sympathy for.

Private hire cars are not a realistic alternative to Uber or taxis in most cases, since they generally have to be booked well in advance. In Australia, they're also significantly more expensive than taxis.

Wrong and wrong. I took one to the airport today, I called thirty minutes ahead, and it cost less than a metered fare.

Where in Australia are you, and what company did you use? In both Sydney and Melbourne, all the hire cars I know of cost more.

Melbourne, and I have a VHA account. Metered fares from my home to MEL are inflated by extensive never-ending roadworks. The fixed-rate private hire cars are excellent value for that route. For everything else it's a modest premium, and one I'm very happy to pay.

Exactly. I'm in Australia and have no idea how Uber and taxi prices compare. I use Uber because of the quality of their product.

Not a big fan of Uber as a company though. If Lyft of another viable competitor set up shop here then I'd be open to switching.

I can give a very small sample of data. Uber is $30-33 to my suburb on a Thursday night. I even had a $28 once which is ludicrous (I calculated the theoretical minimum cost of the route to be around $27.50 so it was almost a perfect run).

I've caught taxis on the exact same route twice because my phone was dead and I couldn't order an Uber. One was $48 and the other was $55. I believe it's more on a Friday or Saturday (they have some 'off-peak' fee or something), but Uber obviously has the occasional surge on those nights too.

Using Taxis, in Melbourne at least, seems to be lighting money on fire.

>An irrelevant percent of people will choose to take the bus because their $10 ride is now $10.50.

That's not how the market works at scale.

And not all markets behave the same.

So pretending to know what Uber customers will do is asinine.

True, but Uber does know, and they probably have teams of data scientists and economists optimizing the fare charge to maximize revenue. My guess is that if Uber could eliminate their losses and suffer no decrease in fares by raising rates 6%, then they would have.

> they will both sooner or later have to reach break-even; neither will run at a loss forever.

This. Subsidies don't scale. When you're company does relatively few rides, you can afford to subsidize rides on the order of dollars. The more rides you do however means can only subsidize rides less and less until it has a negligible effect on a rider's decision to switch providers. At that scale, all companies will start to move away from subsidies.

Subsidies can't buy the same amount of market share at scale without losses growing linearly, which is unacceptable to investors. Subsidies will decline and should eventually disappear in mature markets even with fierce competition. Heavy subsidies really only make sense in immature markets where there is a land grab.