The point is, ridesharing is a viable business. There are numerous profitable companies in Europe and Asia doing the same thing as Uber.
If you talk to many drivers, you'll find a common theme that "bonuses" make up a substantial fraction of their overall income (bonuses are things like "Drive XX rides in a week and get $YYY").
To my understanding, most/all of these bonuses are placed under the accounting budget (under the premise that these bonuses are intended to bring new drivers onto the platform), not the rideshare budget.
So rideshare cost of operations doesn't properly reflect the true cost of operating the rideshare business, which means that unit economics are worse than they appear in Uber's reporting (possibly even negative).
How can Uber be doing the same thing if Uber is losing money doing the thing and the other companies make money doing it?
Even if one or more sections of Uber are profitable, it's likely that those sections rely on functions performed by unprofitable sections of the company. Disentangling those elements isn't simple. It's possible that Uber as-it-exists-now can never transition to profitability but a company-like-Uber-in-some-ways could be profitable in the future.
In a sufficiently dense area, there is clearly a market for app-summoned taxis (for various values of who owns/maintains/pays for said cab). Prices may be higher than today's rideshare and volume lower. But there's a market for it. Just probably in fewer areas/at fewer times/with more expensive rates than today.
Oh well. For sure, but it's a pretty vague statement, isn't it? We're not talking about some modest value that can keep some small company running; we're talking about $75 billion value. I'm sure that not one, but many small companies can thrive providing local services to taxi drivers collecting and dispatching hails. But that's a far cry from that to a single global company valued at almost a hundred billion dollars.
>>Also, Rides had already reached profitability at Uber (pre-covid).
Need to be taken with a grain of salt. There are so many ways to game accounting in general, and even more ways to game the accounting of business unit. So when they say Rides is profitable, it may be true, or close enough to be true to be so. But you should doubt. If a company has $14b in revenue and $8b in losses (2019) and a profitable unit like Rides. That means some other part of the company is lost $8b+. I am sure they spend a lot on delivery, and self driving cars, but do they spend that much.
The reply to this will be "that involved a one time write down.." or some such. But when a company has never turned a profit, its hard to tell when the one time costs will stop.
That said, I believe there is a viable business in Uber. It has just been overvalued.