If you have to do it sooner rather than later anyway, why not do it sooner? They knew (or should have known) that self-driving wasn't going to be there for decades. Why not bring prices to sustainable levels and let the chips fall where they would?
The cynic suspects it's because various people could continue to milk the cow for a while.
Uber and ride sharing in general is especially screwed because there are other ride sharing services funded by other investors who are _also_ willing to burn money for marketshare. As soon as one of these companies tries to increase pricing for profitability, customers will move to a different platform that is still subsidizing rides.
Seems like a "Congratulations you've played yourself" state for the entire industry.
Terrible industry to invest in, essentially there are other investors who are willing to lose all of their money to ensure that you lose most of your own. It's almost a clever little wealth redistribution engine lol.
Because the market is insane.
Uber has yet to prove that their core business can actually make money. A large part of the appeal of Uber is that they're cheap, nobody has proved that customers are willing to pay enough for an Uber for them to turn a profit.
I'm legitimately surprised that they're _still_ not making profit on ride sharing. I just kind of assumed that the insanity had stopped. Running at a loss to gain marketshare is a fine and reasonable strategy if you think you actually have a plan to make money later, so far Uber's plan is to spend even more money expanding to other related markets hoping for profitability. I would never buy shares in Uber.