[bunkat]

Uber doesn't make enough from fares to be profitable, they use investors' money to heavily subsidize them. Once the investor money runs out, Uber won't be able to pay drivers unless they jack up prices considerably. Once they are no longer price competitive, customers will move to other services.

Turns out the car service business isn't very sticky at all (even the drivers work for multiple companies...). Drivers start to leave and the downward spiral begins. They just couldn't get to self driving vehicles fast enough - which may be why they were trying to borrow technology from Google.

[auggierose]

Come on, self driving cars was never a solution for Uber in the medium term. Cabs are in the midst of normal traffic, not even highway or anything. No way this will work good enough within the next 15 years

[ProblemFactory]

"Uber is a play on self-driving cars" is a misleading but often repeated story.

When Uber started and raised its first investment rounds, self-driving cars were too far away to be part of a business plan. I doubt the latest investors take that view either - spending billions per year until self-driving cars happen is a way too expensive way to build up a fickle user base who will switch the moment a competitor offers 10% lower rates.

And when self-driving cars do arrive, there is no reason to believe that Uber will have exclusive access to them. Google and other software companies will be licensing the technology to anyone who pays for it, car manufacturers will be selling cars to anyone who pays for it.

It may kill taxi driver as a career, but there is no defensible advantage to Uber compared to Lyft, Hailo, Taxify, and so on.

[Cacti]

Yeah. The whole driverless car thing with Uber is such a load of crap. It wasn't even in the plan until they started hemoraging money and had to come up with some excuse to keep investors on board. And by that point they were late to the game.

Uber as a play on driverless cars is a smokescreen to distract people from the fact they have little advantage over other companies and can't for the life of them turn a profit.

[rubicon33]

> they have little advantage over other companies and can't for the life of them turn a profit.

At this point why doesn't Uber just lay off a HUGE portion of their staff and kill the R&D. It's hard to imagine if they downsized significantly and quit investing in self driving cars, that they couldn't tip the needle into profitability.

Isn't that a fairly common move for a startup? Burn money to get off the runway, then downsize to stabilize?

[bryanrasmussen]

not in the medium term, but maybe some investment thought they were going to have it in the long term and now - given legal issues - nobody is going to think that.

[timje1]

Ha, nice use of "borrow".

[adventured]

> Once the investor money runs out

And when will that be exactly? This entire thread is overflowing with nothing but fantasies of Uber dying - basically raw emotional hatred - and little else.

Eight years on, they've never had a serious problem with raising capital and there's no evidence to suggest they'll struggle to do so now. The absolute last problem that Uber has right now, is money.

[bogomipz]

>"This entire thread is overflowing with nothing but fantasies of Uber dying - basically raw emotional hatred - and little else."

Except that there are no shortage of people who have maintained this view long before Uber's CEO was asked to resign and before Susan Fowler's blog post. Also there are also plenty of people who have commented here that believe Uber's prospect without Travis Kalanick as CEO are not good and also believe he should not have been removed.

>"Eight years on, they've never had a serious problem with raising capital and there's no evidence to suggest they'll struggle to do so now."

You might want to look up the term "irrational exuberance":

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/irrationalexuberance.asp

[sethrin]

Uber has been a fantastic means to lose billions, so far. It's not clear that they have a way to profitability. Are you going to invest in them? Do you trust their numbers? If so you might want to explain why.

[vostrocity]

"no longer price competitive" to who?

"drivers start to leave" where are they leaving to?

[seesomesense]

Borrow or steal, it is all the same, until the courts rule otherwise...