Well in Singapore, you need a COE just to buy a car, and those can run $40k~$60k depending on the car type and how many people are bidding for the limited amount of COEs. That's not including the cost of the car, or the fact that the COE is only good for 10 years (extensions are for 7 years, cost just as much and so you're better off just selling/scrapping the car).

Singapore is one of the largest exporters of used cars because of this crazy system. It does reduce their emission though and they have an amazing fully automated (driverless) train system.

I don't really see the crazy? Only downside is that need for a car (think disabled, or parents with disabled children) isn't correlated with wealth or income, so it may not be as fair as other systems, but rationing by price is fairly transparent.

I wish we had something like it in NYC! We're getting a congestion tax soon for part of Manhattan though, so that's a start.

Can’t really blame Singapore tho. If they didn’t have a system as they do. The whole country would be in gridlock.

COE == Certificate of Entitlement

thanks for explaining about COEs for running a vehicle in Singapore. I'd never heard about them. There's a bit more here for curious reader: https://www.valuechampion.sg/basics-of-coe

The problem I see is that Uber doesn't understand that their UberEats market is not necessarily the same as their Uber taxi market.

What they fail to realize is that by centralizing their focus on highly populated metropolitan area like NYC and SF they are essentially trying to compete in markets that I wasn't even aware could have restaurants capable of sustaining their businesses when they don't have the option for delivery.

I mean i've been on treasure island and ordered food from just about every notable restraunt in SF you could think of and they all had in house speed delivery services that were willing to travel that far and still managed to get there within 45-75 minutes of placing the order. (presuming you don't order too close to the nightly commute out of the city)

Where Uber should really focus on promoting UberEats is more rural cities like just about every town in the midwest because out here we have a ton of towns with privately owned restaurants that are extremely profitable and yet don't offer delivery services because it's not profitable for them to do so; but it would be profitable for everybody if Uber offered their services as the middle man for every restraunt in town.

I mean i know of like 4 restaurants in town that 3 or 4 ubereats drivers could provide delivery services for and I know that number of drivers would have to grow to 8 or 12 within a year of providing the service. And there is virtually no competition out here and out here car delivery actually makes a lot more sense than trying to figure out where to park in NYC or SF.

Honestly the fact that Uber isn't already implementing this in my town by now, would concern me enough to consider shorting their stock.

There is nothing more telling in my view that a company is headed into uncharted territory it's totally not prepared to navigate than a company not understanding where they aught to set their heading because they haven't got even the slightest clue in which direction all the booty has been buried.

I think you are overstating the opportunity here. Unit economics of scalable food delivery do not support small towns.

Scale requires sales reps to sign restaurants, account managers to maintain the relationships with the restaurants, local operations people to recruit, induct, clothe and support the delivery guys, local marketing managers to get the initial userbase.

And that's not even considering the sprawling single-center infrastructure of smaller towns, with most affluent folk that could in theory order takeout every day living outside the immediate center of the town.

You maximize efficiency (cost per order, or in other words how many orders per hour a salaried employee can deliver, or in other words how little you can pay a non-salaried 100% commission-based delivery partner while they still maintain hourly earnings they deem acceptable) by increasing the pace at which deliveries are made by any single courier.

A dense population and a uniform distribution of popular restaurants will result in a courier going point A to B, B to C, C to D. Each node represents both a restaurant and the next delivery location.

A typical small town infrastructure would result in the delivery person going A->B, B->A, A->C, C->A, A->D, D->A. The town's only two restaurants are located in A, whereas B, C and D are delivery destinations. That's double the marginal cost per order.

Uber owns ~20 to ~30 percent of Grab, JFYI. They specifically exited the Uber brand from Singapore, and pushed Grab.

Grab bought Uber. Because no one used Uber. The only people who really used Uber in Asia were tourists. As part of the deal Uber got a 27.5% stake in Grab.

Grab has always been a better experience than Uber too. Uber was expensive.

“Always been a better experience” is just a personal experience.

Uber launched in SG before Grab did. Many drivers preferred Uber - they’re payout schedule and incentive structure was more favourable. Many riders, both locals and expats, including myself, preferred Uber. Grab undercutting Uber’s pricing was a tactic, just like GoJek is trying to chew off a market share by underpricing Grab today.

I obviously can’t speak for drivers but I have spoken to 2 who both said they preferred grab over Uber because they picked up many more customers.

I never used Uber because it was never cheaper than booking a taxi over the phone.

Grab did a lot more than Uber for their app too. Pretty much from day 1 you could type a taxi stand number in and it would pin the exact location. Uber couldn’t even come close to figuring out where I was standing. So personal booking and usage experience was far better than Uber for sure.

Not a Singaporean. But I have traveled extensively in Malaysia and Singapore and I can attest to the better experience of Grab. The Grab experience (availability, pickup time, price, etc.) was so much better that I never even thought of installing the Uber app in my subsequent visit to these two countries.

As a VN Grab user I love how superior the UX is for Grab than Uber. The subscription packages are great, GrabFood is great, the translation features, rewards system, mobile top up, etc... I don't look forward to returning to the US because I'll have to use Uber and Lyft which are behind Grab by miles.

Same in Vietnam.

It was a South East Asia deal.

Without China (sold to Didi) and SEA, there's not too much of Asia where Uber still exists. In Japan they do. No UberX there, but Uber Eats look like they might be doing okay there. They are (including UberX) still in Taiwan.

I used Uber in Hong Kong.

Ahh yep, they're still in HK as well. South Korea too.

Neither HK or Korea are part of SEA.

Correct, although the context on why that is relevant is missing?

The post was in response to:

>> there's not too much of Asia where Uber still exists

The context is that the deal was for SEA. The deal didn’t include he rest of Asia. I was stating that it exists in HK, Korea, Taiwan, Japan, because these countries are not part of SEA.

Hong Kong isn't part of SEA.

Correct, although the context on why that is relevant is missing?

The post was in response to:

>> there's not too much of Asia where Uber still exists

One of the reason is because Singapore is small compared to US. Its hard and dangerous to travel around motorbikes here

Maybe it's not Singapore that's an outlier, but the US? Delivery in Spain, Portugal, and other European countries is by motorcycle.

I believe in the US, a car driving license is fairly easy to get and used cars are very cheap. Plus, given the driving culture, I assume that in the US people just don't think about motorcycles unlike in Europe or Asia as a viable way to get around.

In The Netherlands, most deliveries are by ebike. This has a lot of advantages:

- Even cheaper than motorcycles / scooters

- No license required

- Excellent bike infrastructure already available

It's a safety in numbers thing. When there are 90 motorbikes and 20 cars at an intersection it's a lot safer to be riding a motorbike than in the US where you might see one or two motorbikes on your commute.

The same thing happens here in Bucharest, but I’d say it’s 80% bikes.

Same here in India