Uber's Days Are Numbered

I have been saying this privately and on my Facebook page for at least two years. Uber's days are numbered. We just don't know exactly when it'll collapse. It really depends on the amount of fools willing to help it burn capital. Now hear it from Princeton's Alain Kornhauser below. (The linked article dances around the truth and provides vague and false hope.)

"At the size that they are now, neither Lyft or Uber are close to break-even. If they grow, it gets worse (unit labor charges go up and average revenue goes down, fundamental supply - demand). Driverless in a sufficiently large Operational Design Domain to substantially increase their size in not going to happen soon enough to save them as they exist today. They were just too early.

Their only "survival" option is to downsize by a factor of at least 10, reduce their valuation/stock price by a factor of at least 10. Become a "nice business" for 5-10 years and wait for Driverless aTaxis to become a reality and start this all over again.

Driverless is a necessary condition to make this into a network non-labor intensive business. Alain"

Chris Urmson Reflects On Challenges of Driverless Cars

Chris Urmson reflects on challenges, no-win scenarios and timing of driverless cars is a summary of six important points (written by Chuka Mui in Forbes) that summarize the current state of the art and the future likely path of driverless technology.

1. There is a lot more chaos on the road than most recognize.
2. Human intent is the fundamental challenge for driverless cars.
3. Incremental driver assistance systems will not evolve into driverless cars.
4. Don’t let the “Trolley Car Problem” [ethics] make the perfect into the enemy of the great.
5. The “mad rush” is justified.
6. Deployment will happen “relatively quickly.”

Most articles that cover Transportation as a Service or TaaS including this neglect to address the environmental trade-off... much less need for parking, but much higher VMT and energy use.

Death spiral for cars. By 2030, you probably won’t own one shows possible trends in costs and adoptions, but I think that it is way off the mark.