Uber Will Not Achieve a Monopoly [pdf]

by johnloeber • 12 years ago

7 2 12 years ago

ryanajon• 12 years ago

"The ridesharing space does not offer advantages to economies of scale" - efficiencies of scale in ridesharing are massive; more consumers means a more liquid marketplace and less downtime for drivers (idle time or time-in-transit to a passenger)and more drivers means shorter wait times and increased reliability in car availability. Beyond the improved consumer experience, there's real $ value creation resulting from these efficiencies that can lead to increased revenue/unit of time for drivers, decreased fares for passengers or increased commission for the ridesharing platform.

johnloeber• 12 years ago

Those are very valid points, and they certainly apply at the moment. However, I think that this ceases to be an issue when meta-rideshare services begin to emerge, which I think is (technologically) inevitable.

What I think we will see is that a driver will use a meta-rideshare to be available on all ridesharing services (Uber, Lyft, Sidecar, etc.) just in order to maximize his/her rides per hour.

The same for users, who will use a meta-rideshare to query all ridesharing services in order to get a ride as quickly/cheaply as possible.

A great analogy for this is in airlines: yes, some airlines are bigger than others and consequently have certain advantages. But most customers use flight search engines (Google Flights, Kayak, etc.) in order to find the cheapest/best flights.

The only counter-argument to this would be that users would have some sort of brand preference for choosing Uber every time rather than using a meta-rideshare to find the chapest/fastest ride. But such brand loyalty is unlikely too emerge: (1) Uber's public image is far too tainted, and (2) it's very hard to differentiate Uber's core product (seat in a car) from that of the competitors.

Uber Will Not Achieve a Monopoly [pdf]

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