That’s a competitive advantage over taxis, then. It’s one of several reasons I choose uber over yellow cabs when in NYC (9 times out of 10, anyway).

Up until Uber exhausts cash on hand. And then you’ll be back to using taxis or public transit, no?

A competitive advantage has no value without a path to profitability.

> Up until Uber exhausts cash on hand.

Uber's rideshare business appears to be almost revenue-neutral. So if you're waiting for Uber to run out of cash, you'll be waiting a while. Worst case scenario, they stop pouring money into their money-losing ventures and focus on rideshare.

Perhaps human mobility solutions should be run as non-profit.

So are you going to start this business now or wait until Uber folds?

Start what business? Have taxis gone out of business? Or did they adopt their own ridehailing apps and continue to exist? I still see cabs everywhere in NYC, Chicago, and SF.

If you can’t kill taxis with tens of billions of dollars of VC investment, how does the last bit of cash Uber has help?

This seems based on the assertion that people are only using Uber because it's cheaper which, as far as I can tell, is completely unfounded.

> A competitive advantage has no value without a path to profitability.

It's a real pity that there is no 'HN Quotes' section, I'd definitely nominate this one.

That's a pretty terrible solution. Leaving good, willing-to-pay customers out in the rain? Not really customer-service oriented, are we?

Customer obsession is worker abuse veiled as clever business practices.

Workers > Customers > Shareholders (this is Costco’s stated priority by the way; they do very well and treat their employees well)

Try to get Costco to show up at your house 7 minutes from now.

That’s the point

There could still be “surge” pricing though, as long as the company paid the employee-drivers overtime. So perhaps drivers who are “off” could be incentivized to drive during the additional demand.