I guess I just have trouble seeing how you can effectively grow a startup at half speed. PG recently wrote a very persuasive article on growth being pretty much the only metric that matters for a startup: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html, and the accepted model seems to be break-neck growth at all cost.
Granted the minefield-like political/regulatory environment may make this a special circumstance, and I definitely understand and respect your reasoning, but I still have trouble seeing "slow and steady" as Uber's path to victory.
Yeah, deliberately slowing down does seem outside the expected startup model. If it is true that they must grow at breakneck speed, and that they must dramatically improve their political positioning, they may have found themselves in a coffin corner. But is pg looking at sustained growth as a necessary condition of startup success? Or as the best heuristic for assessing startup health amid lots of uncertainty? If the latter then particular cases merit inspection. Uber has proved its market. The political issues are obviously strategic. There is no one way to win and they should think hard about applying conventional startup thinking to their own position.
Regarding the land grab, I really disagree. They already have a handful of domestic competitors cropping up, and I wasn't even aware of that Hailo company that objclxt mentions above, which sounds pretty formidable.
If they sit around doing a bunch of navel gazing on the nature of the political process and civil discourse, they are toast.