sedubby

Corporate worker not your driver

Miami305

How long until Uber burns through angel investor money, and goes bankrupt trying to get self-driving vehicles to work?

Yoshi212

Do you enjoy your work?

Gig103

Why would Uber be investing in self-driving cars? Owning a fleet of vehicles seems counter to your business model of just having to arrange rides and take payment.

747FC

You work in corporate? How is the climate there, with all the defections out of C-suite?

WorldLux

Cutting out the middleman (aka the driver). Seems like the logical consequence of car sharing. Rather than having cars parked along the street in the hopes of a customer coming along to use the car, the car can drive to the next customer.

Cars don't sell as good with the current youth as it used to be. The number of 20 to 24 year old licensed drivers is in steady decline in many places. And if you live in a large city, it begs the question why you would need one. It's expensive to own a car (take Tokyo, London, etc.) and isn't all that convenient (compared to public transportation).

Self-driving cars combine the advantages of car-sharing and on-demand trips. No surprise then that so many car makers invest heavily in R&D to get autonomous cars on the road.

sedubby

@Yoshi212 Yes, Uber is still an exciting place to work. Fast-paced, smart co-workers, cool office in SF, very international (offices all around the world - get to work with interesting people from all backgrounds). If you're an engineer the equity packages are eye-popping.

@Miami305 don't foresee that happening - company is very transparent about its finances internally (earnings call broadcasted to all employees - financial reports handed to managers to review with directs). As everyone already saw with China the company can pull the plug when it needs to. Ultimately acquiring 20% of Didi was a pretty amazing outcome.

@Gig103 pretty obvious answer to that- margins improve when you don't have to pay a driver. At least that is my personal answer.

pinniped

Why is Uber so resistant to adding a tipping function in the app? Is Uber still hoping that the no-tipping model wins out in the long run?

For the record, I would love to see the no-tipping model win out in the long run, but it is now a huge point of contention and there are reports of drivers who downrate riders who won't side-bribe them off-platform.

I personally will never tip a driver in cash, at least not until time travel is invented and I'm paying a nostalgic visit to the 1990s. But I fear that my rating will fall and it will become harder to get rides. When I use Lyft, I tend to tip $1-2 on most of my rides.

Yoshi212

While I understand this statement I am very pro tipping. I live in NYC so that is not so odd but I rather like the Lyft platform while preferring the Uber network and the Uber Amex MR link up. I want what Uber puts forth with the ability for myself to add a tip after via the app for their performance while not just because they were my driver.

pinniped

Reading my own question, "Why is Uber so resistant...", I now realize it sounds like I'm begging them to add the feature!

I guess I'm more interested in the rationale behind Uber's resistance to add the feature, from their perspective. Are they hearing a lot from riders who want to see the no-tipping model prevail? I'm sure they're hearing from drivers who want the feature. Their statements on the matter have been confusing, and I realize the statement(s) were part of a negotiated settlement with drivers.

sedubby

My personal take again...tipping creates friction from a UX perspective - any dip in rider conversion due to adding one more step can slow growth. Even if that delta is small it can translate to $$$$ at Uber's scale.

Also think about the fact Uber is in many countries. Tipping is not a universal custom. If Uber built it it would probably have to be a regional feature. How do you decide which regions should get it and which don't? Do you just end up pissing off more people if you offer it in one place and not another? It's tricky.

Gig103

A compromise would be having it available but not default. Put tipping in place but leave it disabled in the settings. Users who want to tip in the app can activate it. Those who want to use cash or not tip, have no change to their experience.

Part of me feels like Uber figures that their processing fees will end up being too big a cut, and the money is more important than driver satisfaction, a statement I make based on everything Uber does. On a $5 tip, they might pay $0.15. On a million rides that's $150k (one engineer's salary?), and they have a lot more than a million rides per year. The only way to make it up is to consider increasing the booking fee, or taking it out of the tip before passing it along to the driver. That wouldn't end well for Uber.

diburning

When you say "rider conversion" I am assuming that this is a metric in where Uber measures the rate in which people come to Uber from other platforms? Or maybe perhaps even people who normally use taxis but are new to ridesharing?

Does this metric only measure new users? Or does it also measure retention? It's hard for them to retain riders when some drivers are pandering for tips at every available moment or maliciously giving riders bad ratings when they don't know whether they should tip.

I don't think that's the case. Uber already has region specific features. UberBLACK isn't available everywhere, and neither is UberTAXI. The app uses the user's region to determine which services are available to offer. They can easily use this same data and mechanism to determine whether the tip screen pops up.

steve64

IMHO, the answer isn't nearly as obvious.
It seems to me that the costs of owning/maintaining/fueling a fleet of cars is going to more than offset any savings from not having to pay a driver. Today the drivers bear all those costs, all Uber is liable for is insurance while a rider is in a car (the car's base insurance, including driving to the passenger's pick-up point is again the driver's costs), the app to hook up passengers with a car and handling the financial aspects of the ride.

And how long will it be before the public will accept a car that has no human operator of any type ? Today Uber still needs to hire a "monitor" to sit in the driver's seat. I'd bet these "backup drivers" will be needed for awhile. They maybe cheaper than payer a full/true driver, but again .... what Uber is currently paying out to drivers isn't just for a driver, it also includes payment for use of their car.

cestmoi123

We're already seeing different people being charged different prices for the exact same ride at the exact same time. Do you think this practice continues?