You can't own that market at least the way Uber or Lyft do it. It's so easy for their drivers to switch and it's easy for their customers. In my view they will keep their dominant market positions only while they subsidize rides and lose money. But as soon as they raise prices to be profitable there will be plenty of competition.

I think the endgame is to dump the stock on the public market so investors and execs can cash out and mission accomplished. I don't think there is any viable long term plan.

A ride hailing service needs to reach a critical density of available cars per km^2 to be useful. When you first install the app there needs to be someone nearby who will pick you up - if there's no car nearby most people will uninstall it. Additionally the more people use your app and the more drivers you have in an area the more effectively you can deal with idling (less variance in demand spikes - making planning easier for drivers). So on the contrary: I think this is a very difficult market to enter for new companies.

You'd be surprised. Since switching is so low, you can pay your way to acquiring all the supply and demand to kick something off, hence all the ridesharing companies in NYC: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubers-competitors-in-nyc-are-...

If you subsidize driving and subsidize riding significantly, people will sign up. A $40 bonus covers several rides for a customer so they'll hold onto the app at least until they've used their initial free offering.

But Juno is only available in NYC (for now?). I think my points still hold outside of densely populated urban areas.

Sure. There are density thresholds for any local businesses. I can't even really get Uber around where I live. Maybe there are a few scattered cars but not many. You'd be pretty silly to set up a competing ride-hailing service here.

There's probably some critical mass for these services to work well and that's going to have at least some effect on whether it makes sense for a new entrant.

The friction against this business model as well is that local governments want to reduce congestion, so they're not going to be happy to license services that are significantly increasing the amount of cars on the road.

Drivers will jump ship if somebody else offers more money. Uber has no investment in their drivers and no loyalty from them. If they can't make money with their current coverage how do they ever want to make money?

"when people no longer own cars" -that phrase assumes a lot of things will happen, none of which will obviously happen. The "sharing economy" in general parses to non Bay Area people as "deal with owning less, peasants." Imagining the idea of this being pitched to yellow vests in France...

Even if the US changes substantially and most people no longer own a car, there is little reason to believe that Lyft or Uber would come out on top, and not Enterprise, or Ford, or another new company that does not exist today

Stipulating that self-driving cars that can operate in dense urban areas in a wide range of weather conditions will exist some day...

Lots of people are still going to own cars, especially as you get to less dense areas where parking isn't difficult or expensive and cars are needed on a daily basis to go places, store things, etc.

What possible advantage, other than fleeting brand recognition, does Lyft or Uber have in a world where self-driving is a standard car feature? Why wouldn't Avis, Hertz, National, <insert new or existing fleet management company here> operate those short-term rentals? Or even the car manufacturers--although based on past behavior--they probably are primarily interested in building cars.

Exactly. Once self driving cars are there , Uber and Lyft have no advantage other other companies. Rental car companies actually have experience managing large fleets which is something Uber and Lyft don't have.

I worked for one of the rental car companies in this space. They literally don't have the ability to execute the technology required for this. They are better at the labor and capital side that the startups don't want to touch.

I don't doubt that's true today. So they either adapt or new entrants displace them. (This is actually a pretty good example of how all companies are needing to increasingly become tech companies to at least some degree.)

In short: The current model provides barely any vendor lock-in. This is great for the free market and prices, but not great for the companies.

but their whole business is built off people owning cars.

i understand people in dense cities may drive less and some not have a car at all, but a car is people important to anyone outside a city in ways ride share will not replace easily. this has nothing to do with lack of public infrastructure, it’s the benefits of being in control of your time

If/when mainstream self-driving eventually arrives, there's a good argument that it will provide the incentive for people to move out to more rural locations where there are many reasons to own your own vehicle.

If you live somewhere that parking's easy, there are a lot of reasons to own your own vehicle which mostly depreciates based on how many miles it's driven anyway. In addition to always having the vehicle available, you can customize it for your needs (sports, kids), use it as a sort of mobile storage locker, install a nice sound system if you're so inclined. If you don't need to drive, I'd expect more people to want a customized work/media entertainment space in their vehicle, not fewer.

The car manufacturers. Maybe the best long term play is targeted aquisition.