Lyft vs. Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s

Re:Lyft vs. Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s by jpatokal on Sunday April 14, 2019 @06:28PM (#19662072)

I'm not so sure about that. Yes, the baseline numbers will be very different, but the economics of ride share are pretty much the same anywhere: there's an existing market price for taxis, which is more or less inflated everywhere due to regulation and inefficiency, and Uber/Lyft/whoever can provide a similar or better service at a profit... except that there's competition fueled by a bonfire of VC money pushing the margin deep into the red.

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Re:Lyft vs. Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s by ohadron on Monday April 15, 2019 @12:28AM (#19663118)

Think about factors such as: cost of vehicle ownership, cost of fuel, minimum wage, social policies, unemployment, public transport infrastructure, population density, specific ride sharing regulation, traffic congestion.

All of these directly effect the unit economics of ride sharing.

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Re:Lyft vs. Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s by jpatokal on Monday April 15, 2019 @01:17AM (#19663256)

You're missing my point. All those factors are real, but they set the unit economics of taxi service, which in turn sets the baseline for Uber/Lyft pricing.

So if the market price for taxi service in a city is X, already accounting for all those factors, Uber/Lyft should be able to deliver the same or better service for (say) 0.9X, again accounting for the factors but adding in efficiency gains from bypassing parasitical taxi medallion owners, not needing dedicated vehicles, having much easier ordering, etc. There will be some variance in how big that factor is (eg. NYC's $1 million medallions gave Uber a really juicy margin to exploit), but overall, if a city can sustain taxi service, it should be able to sustain Uber/Lyft too.

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Re:Lyft vs. Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s by stcredzero on Monday April 15, 2019 @01:00PM (#19666825)

overall, if a city can sustain taxi service, it should be able to sustain Uber/Lyft too

So if a city wants to kill Uber/Lyft, all they need to do is to attack the rideshare margins directly. (Not that they really should. Uber/Lyft is probably a civic good.)

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