Re:End of the line for Uber?
by majormajor on Tuesday August 10, 2021 @04:43PM
(#28134212)
Doesn't it apply to taxis? There weren't as many taxis as ubers, so they were more expensive and harder to get and took longer to show up.
If this was a purely artificial supply constraint (medallian monopolies and abuse, say), then that would be one path to Uber profitability.
If this was just a flexibility problem - where taxi driving full time as a requirement for drivers meant you couldn't hit peak demand without an unsustainable amount of idle time too - Uber could have a path there.
If it was a sort of "step change" demand function, where if you make it trivially available and cheap the growth in demand will be enough to offset the lower per-ride revenue, there's another potential path there.
But it's been a long time now for really none of those theories to pan out.
If this was a purely artificial supply constraint (medallian monopolies and abuse, say), then that would be one path to Uber profitability.
If this was just a flexibility problem - where taxi driving full time as a requirement for drivers meant you couldn't hit peak demand without an unsustainable amount of idle time too - Uber could have a path there.
If it was a sort of "step change" demand function, where if you make it trivially available and cheap the growth in demand will be enough to offset the lower per-ride revenue, there's another potential path there.
But it's been a long time now for really none of those theories to pan out.