FWIW, I heard they convinced investors that economy of scales will make their pricing profitable in the future. At least that's what somebody said in this other Uber thread here.

Whether their calculations will pan out is another story. Whether such tactics should be allowed - yet another.

What economies of scale? Uber distribute the car maintenance costs onto the drivers - making it the most inefficient way to have a fleet of cars.

The Uber model is anti-econonmy-of-scale. It is a non scalable human wave approach.

I suppose the words "pyramid scheme" has been mentioned before... hah, you gotta love the way technology does it, shall we call it Pyramid Scheme 2.0? Promise everyone profits, investors and workers alike, but scam the workers, and maybe there'll be profit for the investors, somewhere in the future.

It's more like a Ponzi scheme than a Pyramid scheme.

For investors, the promise of profitability is continually just over the horizon, as long as you keep investing money. Everyone can see the company is potentially very profitable, but nobody can see a route there.

Though for the drivers, it looks a lot like a multi-level marketing scheme. Be your own boss, choose your own hours, work hard and you will be rich.

I don't see what scales, their costs are per person/vehicle there is no way with their model to see a reduction in costs by acquiring new drivers. Even if you remove the driver and can have fully autonomous cars the costs are perhaps marginally reduced in the long term. The way they burn money I don't think they have that long of a term in them.

I always believe their intention was to become big enough and ubiquitous enough that they could become a monopoly supplier and therefore set profitable prices without the risk of being undercut, having consumed or removed their competition through subsidised rides.

Making a loss on every sale, but making up for it with volume?