The introduction of low-cost options for Uber/Lyft were arguably as important a development as their original ride-hailing app ideas. Once the fleet was no longer constrained to professional drivers, and anybody with a spare hour or two (and a car) could go online, the size of the fleet exploded. That meant the likelihood of having a car near you - no matter where you are in a city - dramatically increased. Sure, call your local car service from home when you're heading to JFK and he'll be there in 10. How about when you're in the Village at 1am? How about Red Hook? Not to mention this allowed the service to be provided in cities all over the world which didn't previously have a car service at all.
> 10,000 highly-paid developers
Uber probably services more than 10,000x the number of rides than your car service did. I suppose you could try employing 10,000 "ladies with a phone" to handle that volume - but of course human dispatch quickly becomes unable to handle those kinds of volumes. Sorry, those developers are necessary for scale.
> and providing a marginally better level of service
Car-sharing with strangers was impossible before Uber/Lyft operated at scale. Share a car to work with some of your colleagues, who happen to live near you, sure. But to car pool anywhere at any time requires a huge fleet, and the technology to match riders who are taking the same route. That is an very difficult problem to solve, and yes it takes capable engineers. That car pooling allows fares which are probably around a third of what your car service charges. More improvements are on the way which should see short-medium trips of a comparable cost to public transport.
Not to mention providing this service in under-served and otherwise unprofitable areas, to minorities, at all times of day, all across the world. Plus of course a consistent name and brand, by far the biggest value-add ;)
Now integrate with other modes of transport - public transport, bikes, and yep even scooters. These companies are positioned to shape entire cities' transit systems (they already have, for better or for worse). They're not the same as your small car service, and they're not over-engineered. They're certainly not setting out every day worried about justifying their Silicon Valley existence.
> Sure, call your local car service from home when you're heading to JFK and he'll be there in 10. How about when you're in the Village at 1am? How about Red Hook?
New York is a bad example. The system that was here before was pretty exceptionally good.
Standard protocol if you were in the boroughs was to simply ask for the local car service number. Restaurants, bars and bodegas all had it ready. If you were in the city, just flag down a yellow.
We can stop calling it car sharing. The Uber and Lyft pools are car sharing. Sending out a driver to pick up someone and bring them to another place the driver wasn't going to go, isn't any sort of car pooling. It's just putting the costs of fleet maintenance onto the driver.
It was a short term gain for Uber, but now that the business has gone on long enough drivers are pricing in the maintenance costs to what they need to drive. That's going to drive up costs for Uber and other ride hailing companies because having every individual maintain their car personally is inherently less efficient than having a centralized fleet with professional mechanics who also make sure to perform preventative maintenance that most car owners avoid
I was referring to Uber/Lyft pools in that paragraph: "Share a car to work with some of your colleagues, who happen to live near you, sure." Agreed, ride sharing is a much misused term.
I can't give an informed opinion on just how profitable driving for Uber/Lyft is right now. Everything I've read on the subject has been (potentially) biased, devoid of real data, or since shown to be incorrect. I'd love to read studies on this if there are some available. I do think the best solution is to make as much data on profitability available to drivers, so the market can correct itself if necessary, like you suggest.
However I don't think the ride hailing companies are blind to the economics of their markets. If there is a problem with the economics, that's an existential risk and they're not going to be sitting on their hands. If we're comparing ride-hailing with traditional car services, it's the ride-hailing side which have a whole lot of knobs they can twiddle to make the market work, and they're adding more all the time (e.g.: Uber/Lyft Pool can go a long way toward mitigating driver "opex" - minimizing those empty seats, like any efficient transport operator.)
I just don't think the efficiency of centralized maintenance is really that big a deal. Even if we ignore all the other factors at play, if that's the make-or-break feature Uber could easily provide centralized mechanical support for their fleet. They already have driver centers in each city they operate in.
Maintenance costs are not going to drive up costs for Uber/Lyft. It will just increase driver churn once they've been wrung out of their maintenance subsidy gift to these platforms.
The introduction of low-cost options for Uber/Lyft were arguably as important a development as their original ride-hailing app ideas. Once the fleet was no longer constrained to professional drivers, and anybody with a spare hour or two (and a car) could go online, the size of the fleet exploded. That meant the likelihood of having a car near you - no matter where you are in a city - dramatically increased. Sure, call your local car service from home when you're heading to JFK and he'll be there in 10. How about when you're in the Village at 1am? How about Red Hook? Not to mention this allowed the service to be provided in cities all over the world which didn't previously have a car service at all.
> 10,000 highly-paid developers
Uber probably services more than 10,000x the number of rides than your car service did. I suppose you could try employing 10,000 "ladies with a phone" to handle that volume - but of course human dispatch quickly becomes unable to handle those kinds of volumes. Sorry, those developers are necessary for scale.
> and providing a marginally better level of service
Car-sharing with strangers was impossible before Uber/Lyft operated at scale. Share a car to work with some of your colleagues, who happen to live near you, sure. But to car pool anywhere at any time requires a huge fleet, and the technology to match riders who are taking the same route. That is an very difficult problem to solve, and yes it takes capable engineers. That car pooling allows fares which are probably around a third of what your car service charges. More improvements are on the way which should see short-medium trips of a comparable cost to public transport.
Not to mention providing this service in under-served and otherwise unprofitable areas, to minorities, at all times of day, all across the world. Plus of course a consistent name and brand, by far the biggest value-add ;)
Now integrate with other modes of transport - public transport, bikes, and yep even scooters. These companies are positioned to shape entire cities' transit systems (they already have, for better or for worse). They're not the same as your small car service, and they're not over-engineered. They're certainly not setting out every day worried about justifying their Silicon Valley existence.