[venomsnake]

> Uber has fundamentally reshaped how we view and consume transportation.

I live in a European capital. I have been calling cabs by SMS to address for 15 years now. I write starting address, end point and receive in sms the number of the cab and in how many minutes it will be at my door.

Can you point the fundamental difference with Uber?

[SilasX]

That doesn't seem to take advantage of modern IT like Uber does:

1) Keeping a record of driver and passenger ratings (disincentivizing bad behavior on both sides)

2) Streamlined complaint resolution process

3) Remote monitoring of the ride to see if they took an unnecessarily long route

4) Payment being handled behind the scenes so you can just get in and out without stopping to pay (plus not having to do the tipping dance for Americans)

5) Getting updates as the car gets closer

6) (once at scale) Pairing people together on similar journeys to save money (UberPool/Lyft lines).

7) (not sure if the system you refer to had this) The destination already being loaded on the nav when you step in.

8) Edit: plus, apparently they collect a ton of data about rides to estimate where requests are most likely to be and encourage drivers to be there

[supster]

Great, now if you go to a Tier 3 city in China will that work also? Has your SMS cab service built a worldwide network with deep liquidity? Does your cab service account for supply and demand in realtime? Does you cab service experiment in other forms of logistics from helicopters, food delivery, bike couriers? Does that service employ the entire former Carnegie Mellon Robotics department for R&D into self driving cars? If you said yes to all of these, please let me know, I would love to invest!

[venomsnake]

Two of sentences you wrote deal with investment to the future that is not yet implemented - so they cannot change "fundamentally how we view transportation" yet.

Supply and demand in realtime is not an issue, since my town is oversupplied on cabs so a crunch rarely arises. The worldwide network with deep liquidity is useless when we are talking about local service. Those third tier city china drivers will have hard time giving a hand in London if a crunch arises.

Uber is just a gypsy cab with a polished app. Everything else is just in the works.

[leonroy]

That's a little like comparing the classified pages to eBay. Both eBay and uber reduce friction between demand and supply and open up the size of the market far beyond its original scale.

The fact that I can use uber anywhere in the UK or US and have a cab of a particular size and luxury spec, within 10 mins, billed to my card with no messing with cash is incredible.

Their whole experience is as frictionless as possible. I don't much care for some of the attitudes conveyed by uber personnel but I wouldn't discount their achievements.