Sobre el modelo de negocio de Uber

Cita de Mad Tax

en inglés pero merece la pena el esfuerzo de traducirlo

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2...f-destruction/

Cita de Alejandro001

Brutal. Sin paliativos!. ¡Pero qué buen análisis!

Dan ganas de imprimir el artículo e ir a pegárselo en la cara de los defensores a ultranza de la liberación del taxi y los abanderados de Uber/Cabify tanto de políticos como de CNMC (se supone que éste organismo está para promover y defender el buen funcionamiento de todos los mercados en interés de los consumidores y de las empresas. Está claro que lo de los consumidores se les ha olvidado). Y todo por la supuesta defensa del bienestar del consumidor cuando evidentemente lo que están enmascarando son los beneficios de sus bolsillos.

Por cierto, quien escribe el artículo, Hubert Horan, no es un cualquiera o un izquierdista defensor de las regularizaciones. Fue pionero en la liberación de la aviación en EEUU y su trabajo está basado en el bienestar del consumidor.

Cita de fran1731

Buenas mad tax, como te encuentras???

Lo he leído, directame te de tu enlace en inglés, mi teléfono lo traduce directamente, y en resumen, uber ni es competitivo ni rentable.

Lee tu esto ahora, esta circulando por las redes que están ardiendo, sobre el taxi de Madrid, y ya se sabía que pp, cs y vox en ayuntamiento y comunidad de Madrid no iba a traer nada nuevo.

NOTICIA DE HOY MISMO.

https://www.eleconomista.es/empresas...FZ9rqaw6Exg_e0

Cita de Alejandro001

Muy, pero que muy buen artículo y escrito por un consultor de la industria del transporte, nada menos!. No tiene desperdicio.

Fundamental las frases que cita el artículo. A modo resumen:

- Uber no solo carece de poderosas ventajas competitivas, sino que en realidad es menos eficiente que los competidores que ha estado sacando del negocio.

- ...subsidió las tarifas y los niveles de servicio que no podían igualar los titulares que tenían que cubrir los costos de las tarifas reales de pasajeros. Los subsidios masivos de Uber fueron explícitamente anticompetitivos y , en última instancia, insostenibles, pero hicieron que la compañía fuera enormemente popular entre los pasajeros que disfrutaban de no tener que pagar el costo total de su servicio.

- ...Uber no tiene ventajas competitivas de eficiencia, opera en una industria con pocas barreras de entrada y ha perdido más de $ 14 mil millones en los últimos cuatro años.

- El encuadre deseado de Uber, que estaba librando una batalla moral en nombre del progreso tecnológico y la libertad económica , era aceptada acríticamente por la prensa de la industria comercial y tecnológica, que nunca se molestó en analizar la economía real de la empresa o su comportamiento anticompetitivo.

- La innovación más importante de Uber ha sido producir niveles asombrosos de riqueza privada sin crear ningún beneficio sostenible para los consumidores, los trabajadores, las ciudades a las que sirven o cualquier otra persona.

- Uber tiene costos más altos que los operadores tradicionales en todas las categorías distintas del combustible.

- Uber explotó el poder artificial del mercado para subvertir la dinámica normal del mercado. Sus extensos programas de reclutamiento de conductores utilizaron la deshonestidad bruta para engañar a los conductores, incluidas las tergiversaciones continuas del pago bruto (antes de deducir los costos del vehículo) como pago neto, y en un momento la compañía afirmó que los conductores de Uber en Nueva York promediaron $ 90,000 en ganancias anuales.

- (fundamental para entender quien pide a gritos la liberalización del taxi). Las empresas de taxis en mercados no regulados no tienen barreras naturales de entrada y, por lo tanto, enfrentan el riesgo de un exceso de capacidad ruinoso que reduce la utilización y evita un equilibrio viable de oferta y demanda. Como han demostrado los casos anteriores de Uber y de entrada ilimitada al mercado, los nuevos participantes no cobran tarifas lo suficientemente altas como para cubrir los costos operativos completos, lo que garantiza grandes pérdidas para todos.

- Los clientes percibieron correctamente que Uber ofrecía una mayor disponibilidad y confiabilidad que las compañías de taxis tradicionales pero no reconocieron que todas estas mejoras requerían miles de millones de dólares en subsidios insostenibles... Para desviar la atención de los subsidios que realmente impulsaron su popularidad, Uber y sus partidarios presentaron una variedad de afirmaciones de relaciones públicas vagas, sin fundamento y en constante cambio diseñadas para inducir al público a pensar que su popularidad realmente tenía algo que ver con poderosos avances de eficiencia.

- El modelo de negocios de Uber no ha funcionado en ningún lado, y ha fracasado desastrosamente en muchos mercados que la compañía alguna vez afirmó que eran estratégicamente críticos, incluidos China, Rusia.

- Insistió en que era una "compañía tecnológica" que vendía software sofisticado y que no podía compararse con las compañías de taxis. De hecho, sin embargo, Uber lleva a las personas del punto A al punto B, al igual que los taxis lo han hecho durante cien años... La única distinción económica significativa entre "taxis" y "viajes compartidos" es que esta última evita las regulaciones que los taxis tradicionales aún deben obedecer y depende de miles de millones en subsidios depredadores para los inversores.

- Para hacer frente a la creciente conciencia de sus años de grandes pérdidas en el servicio de automóviles, Uber ha anunciado sus principales inversiones en vehículos autónomos. Afirma que esto transformaría la rentabilidad, ya que eliminar a los conductores eliminaría el 60 por ciento de los costos de Uber. Pero no hay evidencia de que la automatización de la Etapa 5 (autos sin volantes) esté remotamente cerca de la adopción comercial generalizada, y Uber obtiene cero retorno de sus inversiones en esta área hasta que lo esté.

- ...el ex CEO Travis Kalanick estableció una cultura corporativa despiadada, monomaníaca, de "crecimiento a cualquier costo". Esta cultura facilitó la desobediencia legal, el sabotaje de la competencia, el hostigamiento de periodistas críticos y de personas que habían demandado a Uber, la obstrucción de la aplicación de la ley local y el robo de propiedad intelectual.

- Las narrativas de Uber copiaron directamente la propaganda libertaria: ...Uber tuvo desafíos de comunicación mucho mayores y tuvo que fabricar artificialmente toda su imagen pública. Tuvo que convencer al público de que su crecimiento se basó enteramente en innovaciones tecnológicas poderosas y eficiencia superior , mientras que evitando cualquier escrutinio de su economía real, especialmente sus subsidios y pérdidas multimillonarios. Tenía que convencer a políticos y periodistas de que era una compañía "tecnológica" que había creado una industria completamente nueva con una dinámica única, no una compañía de transporte que podría verse obligada a obedecer las reglas que rigen a las compañías de transporte... Las narrativas de esta campaña, repetidas en docenas de publicaciones, incluyeron enmarcar la desregulación del taxi como una batalla heroica por el progreso, la innovación y la libertad económica. Sus principales afirmaciones eran que miles de conductores emprendedores en dificultades habían sido bloqueados de las oportunidades de trabajo por el "cartel de taxi" y los reguladores corruptos que les correspondían, y que los consumidores disfrutarían de los mismos beneficios que la desregulación de las aerolíneas había producido. En una palabra, a los consumidores se les prometió un almuerzo gratis. La desregulación del taxi conduciría a tarifas más bajas, resolvería los problemas de las largas esperas, brindaría un servicio mucho mayor (especialmente en vecindarios donde el servicio era deficiente) y aumentaría los empleos y salarios para los conductores. Por supuesto, no se incluyeron datos o análisis de la economía real del taxi que muestren cómo podrían producirse estos maravillosos beneficios.

- Ya había una amplia evidencia histórica de que la desregulación del taxi no produciría el tipo de beneficios que Uber prometía. A principios de la década de 1980, inmediatamente después de la desregulación de las aerolíneas, diecisiete ciudades de los Estados Unidos desregularon sus industrias de taxis, y luego rápidamente cambiaron de rumbo cuando las ganancias de eficiencia y los beneficios para los consumidores no se materializaron

- Uber, por otro lado, buscaba eliminar a su competencia, al tiempo que se aseguraba de que los titulares aún tuvieran que seguir las reglas que Uber ignoraba. Sin embargo, en el caso de los servicios de automóviles, los cambios radicales en la tecnología y los costos de conducir taxis no han vuelto obsoletas las regulaciones de taxis, y ningún estudio independiente ha demostrado que las regulaciones específicas hayan causado ineficiencias en la industria.

-El Uber de hoy es claramente más popular que el servicio de taxi tradicional, pero esta observación no tiene sentido desde el punto de vista económico. Las únicas comparaciones válidas son con un Uber hipotético y sin subsidios que podría producir los precios y niveles de servicio actuales junto con ganancias sostenibles. Si Uber pudiera de alguna manera convertir los más de $ 14 mil millones que perdió en los últimos cuatro años en ganancias sostenibles y crecientes, sería uno de los mayores cambios corporativos en la historia. Por el contrario, si Uber no logra encontrar los miles de millones de dólares en eficiencias operativas que no pudo encontrar en los últimos nueve años, tendrá un impacto devastador en la industria de servicios de automóviles urbanos y en las cientos de ciudades que dependen de los taxis. Mientras lucha por reducir las pérdidas
...
Pero la capacidad demostrada de Uber de utilizar el poder económico bruto en una escala sin precedentes empeora aún más los riesgos para la sociedad. Ha demostrado cómo miles de millones en capital de inversión pueden financiar los subsidios y las narrativas fabricadas artificialmente que pueden sesgar totalmente cómo se supone que funcionan los mercados competitivos. Fue capaz de suprimir los salarios y las condiciones laborales ya pésimas a niveles por debajo del salario mínimo, mientras que los políticos y los medios aplaudieron a sus ejecutivos como heroicos innovadores. Fue capaz de anular leyes y regulaciones de larga data y privatizar efectivamente una parte clave de la infraestructura de transporte urbano totalmente fuera de los procesos democráticos normales. Los inversores de Uber se beneficiaron de una reasignación masiva de recursos de la industria a usos mucho menos eficientes.

Brutal. Sin paliativos!. ¡Pero qué buen análisis!

Dan ganas de imprimir el artículo e ir a pegárselo en la cara de los defensores a ultranza de la liberación del taxi y los abanderados de Uber/Cabify tanto de políticos como de CNMC (se supone que éste organismo está para promover y defender el buen funcionamiento de todos los mercados en interés de los consumidores y de las empresas. Está claro que lo de los consumidores se les ha olvidado). Y todo por la supuesta defensa del bienestar del consumidor cuando evidentemente lo que están enmascarando son los beneficios de sus bolsillos.

Por cierto, quien escribe el artículo, Hubert Horan, no es un cualquiera o un izquierdista defensor de las regularizaciones. Fue pionero en la liberación de la aviación en EEUU y su trabajo está basado en el bienestar del consumidor.

Cita de midterm

Menudo analista más relevante,que desconoce la ventaja más importante de Uber sobre sus competidores: Que tiene millones y millones de usuarios. Si voy mañana a Texas no me tengo que andar preocupándome del teléfono de la emisora local que ni lo sé ni me importa. Contadle al analista que la principal ventaja de Uber es que sus usuarios tienen cientos de ciudades donde funciona y que sus conductores tienen millones de personas que quieren viajar. No en balde en Madrid hay más usuarios de Uber en un dia que llamadas a Emisora en dos semanas.

Por otro lado, ya veo por donde vais con trifachitos y demáses. Lo que estamos leyendo aquí son cosas de rojos.

Cita de midterm

Menudo analista más relevante,que desconoce la ventaja más importante de Uber sobre sus competidores: Que tiene millones y millones de usuarios. Si voy mañana a Texas no me tengo que andar preocupándome del teléfono de la emisora local que ni lo sé ni me importa. Contadle al analista que la principal ventaja de Uber es que sus usuarios tienen cientos de ciudades donde funciona y que sus conductores tienen millones de personas que quieren viajar. No en balde en Madrid hay más usuarios de Uber en un dia que llamadas a Emisora en dos semanas.

Por otro lado, ya veo por donde vais con trifachitos y demáses. Lo que estamos leyendo aquí son cosas de rojos.

Cita de fran1731

Buenas mad tax, como te encuentras???

Lo he leído, directame te de tu enlace en inglés, mi teléfono lo traduce directamente, y en resumen, uber ni es competitivo ni rentable.

Lee tu esto ahora, esta circulando por las redes que están ardiendo, sobre el taxi de Madrid, y ya se sabía que pp, cs y vox en ayuntamiento y comunidad de Madrid no iba a traer nada nuevo.

NOTICIA DE HOY MISMO.

https://www.eleconomista.es/empresas...FZ9rqaw6Exg_e0

Cita de arrozpavopollo

dentro de todo lo malo que sea uber la realidad es que esa competencia que le ha hecho ha traido notables mejoras para los usuarios finales del taxi.

poco me importa ya todo, como si uber se hace con el control del mundo o se arruina completamente. mientras los usuarios seamos los que salimos ganando con todas estas nuevas medidas bienvenido sea.

Cita de dioraman

"Mejoras para los usuarios finales del taxi"


https://taxi.cnt.cat/seccio/article/8576

Uber cae en bolsa tras anunciar pérdidas por más de 5.000 millones de dólares en 2T

Analistas de bolsa esperaban una gran pérdida debido a los costos para Uber asociados a su llegada a Wall Street y la compensación pagada en acciones, pero no de esta magnitud
Uber, que en mayo protagonizó una entrada agitada en Wall Street, perdió 5.240 millones de dólares en el segundo trimestre del año tras lo cual sus acciones de despeñaban estrepitosamente.
El anuncio de la compañía tuvo una reacción inmediata. El título del líder mundial de reservas de autos con chofer (VTC) caía alrededor de un 11% a las 20H30 GMT tras el cierre de la Bolsa de Nueva York.
Analistas de bolsa esperaban una gran pérdida debido a los costos para Uber asociados a su llegada a Wall Street y la compensación pagada en acciones, pero no de esta magnitud.
Aun sin este elemento excepcional, el grupo perdió 1.300 millones de dólares entre abril y junio, un 30% más que en el trimestre anterior.
Ajustado por acción, esto equivale a una pérdida de 4,72, mucho más de lo anticipado por los analistas.
El grupo mostró su decepción también por una subida de solo el 14% en sus ingresos, hasta los 3.170 millones de dólares, mientras que los analistas previeron 3.360 millones.
La reserva de vehículo, el negocio principal del grupo, generó 12.190 millones de dólares durante el trimestre, un poco más de lo previsto.
Pero el servicio de reparto de comida (UberEats), una de las actividades de diversificación en las que se centra el grupo, pero que enfrenta una competencia cada vez mayor por parte de empresas nuevas como DoorDash, ha decepcionado con solo 3.390 millones de dólares

Cita de Mad Tax

Inside the abrupt shutdown of BMW’s ReachNow car-sharing service in Seattle and Portland

By Monica Nickelsburg on August 5, 2019 at 8:55 am

ReachNow’s 75 employees learned they were losing their jobs just hours before the company told customers that the car-sharing service was shutting down. The Seattle Department of Transportation, which permitted ReachNow to operate on city streets, had only a few hours of lead time ahead of the general public.

The closure was so abrupt, ReachNow included instructions for customers driving one of their free-floating BMWs at the time they received the email.

“If you are in an active rental, do not fear,” the email said. “Please end your trip in the coverage area as normal when you are done.”

The news of ReachNow’s sudden demise on July 17 left many open questions. What happens to the BMWs parked all over Seattle and Portland? Why did a service that seemed popular with customers shut down just three years after launching? Why does car2go, another car-sharing service under the same umbrella, live on?

It’s a case study in the challenges of operating new mobility services in urban areas. It’s also an illustration of the uncertain future faced by many of these services, even as they transform our cities and reshape the larger transportation landscape.

ReachNow had a unique vantage point on the market, operating both a free-floating car-sharing service, with vehicles driven by end users; and a ride-hailing service, competing with Uber and Lyft. GeekWire talked with current and former ReachNow leaders, employees, customers, city transportation officials, and others to get the inside story of the abrupt closure. Here are the key takeaways from our reporting.

A joint venture between the mobility arms of two giant European automakers — BMW and Daimler — left ReachNow without a distinct role to play in the larger operation, contributing to the decision to end the service in the face of growing competition. ReachNow became a casualty of a complex reshuffling of the two companies’ mobility businesses.
ReachNow did not have a plan for the cars before it shut down. City officials are evaluating the situation and considering potential modifications to future permits for similar services. The cars will likely be sold at auction or in another venue.
The founding CEO of ReachNow describes the shutdown as a missed opportunity. Former drivers for ReachNow Ride, the company’s former Uber and Lyft competitor, fault ReachNow’s marketing decisions for contributing to its larger problems.
The joint venture

In February, Daimler (which owns car2go) and BMW (which owns ReachNow) agreed to pool their resources and create a $1 billion joint venture called YOUR NOW.

Under the joint venture, there would be five distinct companies. Creating those companies required a series of mergers. One of them combined ReachNow and Moovel, a startup that creates apps for city transit authorities that allow travelers to book various modes of transportation in one place. Another merger combined car2go with BMW’s European car-sharing service, Moobel.


YOUR NOW’s brand overview.
The new ReachNow/Moovel company is called REACH NOW. Same name, new syntax. The new car2go/DriveNow company is called SHARE NOW. Both REACH NOW and SHARE NOW operate independently from one another.

The distinction between the two companies is the reason car2go remains operational while ReachNow is no more, according to Laura Gonia, ReachNow’s head of marketing. Daimler and BMW’s leadership wanted to give each of the five companies “a little more focus,” she said. In the REACH NOW group’s case, that meant cutting the car-sharing side of the business.

“As part of this realignment, it was decided that REACH NOW would focus on the development of a multi-modal platform and cease operation of car and ride hailing services in North America,” said REACH NOW CEO Daniela Gerd tom Markotten in an email.


Gerd tom Markotten said the company wanted to inform staff and customers as quickly as possible because REACH NOW was concerned it would not be able to maintain the same level of service for customers if it prolonged the process.


A parking ticket on a ReachNow BMW in Seattle following the abrupt shutdown of the service. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
“We ultimately decided that given that Seattle and Portland are vibrant markets for mobility between other car sharing services, free floating bikes/scooters and public transit, that the community had enough alternative options that the community would not be overly burdened,” she said via email.

Early on, ReachNow operated free-floating car-share in a third market, Brooklyn, but ended service there in May 2018.

Asad Hussain, an emerging technology analyst with PitchBook, said he was not surprised to see ReachNow shut down, “as the joint venture was bound to consolidate its carsharing services at some point.”


“We’ve seen increased partnerships and M&A activity across mobility, especially in the rollout of shared mobility services and the development of autonomous vehicle technologies,” Hussain said. “Automakers and technology companies are choosing to partner to hedge against risk and reduce costs associated with these capital-intensive business models.”

The abrupt end

The Seattle Department of Transportation was as surprised as customers to learn ReachNow was discontinued, according to Becky Edmonds, the city’s car-sharing program manager. SDOT learned the service was shutting down a few hours before the email went out to the public. Edmonds said ReachNow’s car-share permit is still active and the company is “working diligently to get the vehicles off the streets.”

“Every year we make some modifications to the permit conditions,” she added. “We’ll think about this as we’re making 2020 permit conditions.”




ReachNow did not have a plan in place for the 1,000 free-floating cars it operated across Seattle and Portland before shutting down the service. Following the announcement, Gonia and other members of the leadership team began brainstorming what to do with the vehicles.

The company enlisted the workers it uses to fuel and clean the cars to pull them off the road and identified a few nearby parking lots where they could be stored temporarily. Cars still remain on roads throughout Seattle.



Gonia noted that it will take some time because BMW has to send a driver to pick up each of the 750 cars on Seattle streets.

Gerd tom Markotten (REACH NOW’s CEO) estimates that 90 percent of ReachNow’s cars were removed from the streets of Seattle and Portland within two weeks of the closure announcement.

ReachNow is considering selling the cars at auction or through other avenues. Gonia will stay on for a few months to help with the wind-down before moving on. ReachNow employees were not offered opportunities to join the Moovel team.

“To know that everything happened and stopped very quickly was jarring but the support and the community of the team here really speaks to the quality and passion of what we were building,” Gonia said.

Last week, Moovel North America CEO Nat Parker announced he is stepping down from the company, in a LinkedIn post. “I’m ready to start working on my next venture and put together a team to build something special once again. I would like to thank Daimler and BMW for the opportunity to participate in their efforts to rethink urban mobility the last four years and look forward to what our people do next,” Parker wrote.

A ‘missed opportunity’

Six months before ReachNow shut down, founding CEO Steve Banfield left the company as BMW and Daimler were forming the YOUR NOW joint venture. That’s when Gerd tom Markotten took the helm of the newly combined REACH NOW as CEO. Gerd tom Markotten was previously CEO of Moovel Group.

Banfield called the decision to shutter ReachNow a “missed opportunity” in a LinkedIn post following the news. While ReachNow was not yet profitable, he told GeekWire, that was “similar to many services where you need to invest to continue to grow and scale the business.”



“We got great reviews,” he said. “We got very positive word of mouth. People were very big fans of the service.”

REACH NOW had 6.7 million customers in the first quarter of 2019, according to Daimler financial documents. That includes customers of Moovel and the ReachNow car-sharing service. The group added nearly 1 million customers over the next few months, finishing the second quarter with 7.5 million.

But ReachNow also had its challenges. As Daimler and BMW were forming the joint venture, another competitor entered the Seattle market. Lime expanded its service in Seattle beyond bike-share to include free-floating cars called LimePods.

LimePods offered a cheaper option than the existing competitors. It costs 40 cents per minute to drive a LimePod versus 45 cents for ReachNow and car2go. Lime does charge $1 to unlock the car, however.

Lime Director of Strategic Development Jonathan Hopkins said the LimePod service is seeing steady growth in Seattle. “We’re extraordinarily happy with our product,” he said.

ReachNow was also known to have technical difficulties. Customers using the app sometimes struggled to connect to the ReachNow service to end their trips via the app after parking. Customers last month were bombarded with push notifications that were part of an internal test.





And then there was Ride, ReachNow’s short-lived competitor to Uber and Lyft. ReachNow suspended Ride in May when EcoService, the Vancouver, B.C.,-based vendor that supplied the drivers, said it would no longer operate in the U.S.

Former drivers for the contractor said business was slow. “There were no rides,” said Nathan Messer, a former driver for ReachNow Ride. “I would honestly go sit for an eight-hour shift in a running car and get no ride requests the entire time.”

Messer attributed the lack of riders to poor marketing. “They never generated the right demand,” he said.

Another EcoService driver, Victor John Liss Jr., echoed Messer. He said he was not surprised when ReachNow’s car-sharing business shut down because of the company’s “lack of effective marketing and inability to recruit members.”

“I really think ReachNow failed due to a lack of direct marketing,” he added. “They bombarded the internet with ads but neglected to meet the commuter on the street, at the ferry terminal, the symphony, Westlake Plaza, the area farmers’ markets.”

Liss Jr. sent a letter to ReachNow’s Seattle leadership team expressing frustration over EcoService’s abrupt end. “Eco-Service is of course responsible for its poor fiscal management, but I maintain a greater share of the responsibility for the failure of this program rests with the management of ReachNow Seattle,” he wrote.

ReachNow’s Gonia said that “the shut down had nothing to do with the performance of the ReachNow business,” adding that member growth was at least 25 percent each year of operation.

Despite some bumps along the road, Banfield said that ReachNow’s demise could have been avoided. He thinks the service could be operational if ReachNow had been merged directly with car2go, into the joint venture’s car-sharing group.

“If it had been merged with car2go then this might not have been the outcome,” he said. “It was merged into a mobility-as-a-service vision that was interesting and made a lot of sense on the one hand. On the other, it didn’t really fit because it was not part of Moovel’s core business to be a service operator.”

Cita de Taxi_Sevilla

No pasa nada, según los hingenieros de FC todo está justificado porque tiene muchos usuarios.....

Cita de Alejandro001

Me parece una auténtica salvajada perder en lo que va de año más de 6MM$ de dos trimestres. Pero una auténtica barbaridad que empieza a rozar lo punible!. Y es más, que parte de estas perdidas, aleguen, sea por los gastos acarreados por la salida a Bolsa cuando los socios fundadores se han hecho millonarios... no sé!
Aún así el precio de la acción es más que evidente que está siendo sustentada artificialmente para evitar nuevas demandas de sus nuevos socios del IPO.
Cuando entiendan los socios fundadores que el tiempo trascurrido sea el suficiente para eximirles de responsabilidades, Uber quebrará.

Y por si no fueran pocos las malas noticias ya, uno más a su muesca: Uber y Lyft reconocen lo que todos ya sabíamos: sus coches congestionan más las ciudades

Cita de Al-NE

Ya uber ha "recuperado" valor en bolsa, y se sitúa al "valor medio" suyo.

Uber y similares, aunque en su discurso digan que su objetivo es reducir el uso del coche privado para mejorar la movilidad y etc etc. Realmente ellos saben que donde está el negocio, donde está el "pastel" en el transporte publico colectivo. Ese es su objetivo, atraer a los usuarios de estos medios de transporte, aunque sea lo peor para las ciudades. A ellos le da igual.

Por cierto, Nueva York sigue con su "restricciones" a Uber y Lyft
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20...-tlc-de-blasio

Cita de Lupus Novum

El negocio de esas empresas va a ser el coche autónomo, están preparándose desde hace años y mucha inversión se destina a i+D

Cita de Lupus Novum

En 2035 el coche autónomo será totalmente funcional y estará en la calle, puedes citar mi mensaje

Desconozco por el contrario si será cabify, Uber, perico de los palotes, por el momento quien parece que lleva más avanzadas las pruebas es Uber, tesla y alguno más

Quizás incluso sea Mercedes o alguna empresa similar la que elimine a Uber y cabify ofreciendo flotas autónomas de carsharing

Es necio pensar que a un inversor le van a estafar si invierte en Uber, cuando hay miles de analistas y financieros controlando para obtener un retorno de su inversión, saben más que nosotros sin duda

Cita de Lupus Novum

En 2035 el coche autónomo será totalmente funcional y estará en la calle, puedes citar mi mensaje

Desconozco por el contrario si será cabify, Uber, perico de los palotes, por el momento quien parece que lleva más avanzadas las pruebas es Uber, tesla y alguno más

Quizás incluso sea Mercedes o alguna empresa similar la que elimine a Uber y cabify ofreciendo flotas autónomas de carsharing

Es necio pensar que a un inversor le van a estafar si invierte en Uber, cuando hay miles de analistas y financieros controlando para obtener un retorno de su inversión, saben más que nosotros sin duda

Cita de Lupus Novum

Comparar lo que ha pasó hace 20 años con lo que pasa ahora, con el avance en regulación, información, sensibilización y demás es de no tener pies ni cabeza

Pones casos españoles recientes, cuando ya se sabe que somos en muchos aspectos una republica bananera. Cuando hablo de inversores no hablo de una persona, hablo de fondos grandes e institucionales

Te tomas como un ataque contra los taxistas lo que digo, y recurres a intentar atacarme con que si no leo, o alguna gilipollez similar, no te preocupes que yo no estoy en contra de los taxistas, tan sólo aportaba información

Invierto en otros activos, que me recomienda mi gestor de crédit agricole, pero eso es otra historia..

By any measure, Uber’s seven-year entrepreneurial journey has been extraordinary. No venture has ever raised more capital, grown as fast, operated more globally, reached as lofty a valuation — or lost as much money as Uber.

Last month, Uber reported a third-quarter loss of nearly $1.5 billion, bringing its 2017 year-to-date red ink to $3.2 billion. Losses of this magnitude are clearly not sustainable, and call for an explanation of why Uber has been unable to rein in ballooning costs and what it will need to do to survive, let alone prosper.

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Much of the recent discourse on Uber has focused on the numerous unethical and possibly illegal corporate behaviors that continue to dog the company, six months after founder Travis Kalanick resigned as CEO. But while the reputational damage from Kalanick’s win-at-all-costs ethos has certainly not helped Uber’s cause, it has masked a far deeper problem facing the company. Uber’s elephant in the room is that its business model is fundamentally broken. To understand why, it is useful to assess Uber’s business model in the context of the history of the taxi industry.

Shortly after launching an app-hailing black car limo service in San Francisco in 2010, Uber founders Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick recognized the potential to disrupt the $100 billion global taxi industry. After all, this heavily regulated sector had seen little innovation over the prior century, leaving customers to cope with an expensive, inconvenient service that rarely seemed available when most needed. Enter Uber, who incorporated widely available technologies – GPS, Google Maps and mobile computing – into a well-designed app to create a customer pleasing, smartphone-enabled urban transportation service.

Not only did Uber offer enhanced urban mobility, but it was usually cheaper and more convenient than taxis as well. Ride hailing and payment processing were fully automated and Uber was priced well below (30% or more) comparable taxi services. With better/faster/cheaper service, Uber became an immediate hit with consumers, emboldening the company to expand rapidly. To recruit drivers in Uber’s two-sided market, Uber promised high pay and flexible working hours as a compelling value proposition to independent contractors looking to supplement their income.

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Venture capitalists were enthralled with the bold ambition of Uber’s disruptive business model, and eagerly jockeyed for the right to invest in the growing, if unprofitable enterprise. Uber raised a record-setting $11.5 billion through 18 funding rounds, ultimately valuing the company at $68 billion. Flush with cash, Uber raced to launch operations in 737 cities across 84 countries, delivering over 5 billion rides as of this writing.

There’s a lot to like in this story, except for one thing. The taxi industry that Uber is seeking to disrupt was never profitable when allowed to expand in unregulated markets, reflecting the industry’s low barriers to entry, high variable costs, low economies of scale and intense price competition — and Uber’s current business model doesn’t fundamentally change these structural industry characteristics. It is indeed ironic that Uber’s fierce determination to avoid regulatory oversight condemns the company to unprofitable operations that the taxi industry experienced during its pre-regulatory era.

To see these parallels, a little history is in order. The first gas-powered taxis appeared in New York City in 1907, and began replacing horse drawn carriages in for-hire service. Taxicabs gained momentum when the affordable Ford Model T was introduced shortly thereafter, ushering in a wave of new low-price taxi operators. This posed a serious threat to incumbent taxi companies wedded to higher cost automotive fleets, which precipitated violent protests in many major metro areas in support of regulations to severely constrain new entrants to the taxi market. Sound familiar?

Although a few cities legislated restrictions on the permissible number of taxi operators, the largest U.S. taxi market – New York City – remained largely unregulated well into the 1930’s. With the onset of the Great Depression, many unemployed workers turned to the taxi industry to try to earn a living. The resulting oversupply of taxis led to a collapse of fares, as taxi companies and drivers competed in a race to the bottom to attract additional customers. Driver net income and taxi company profits evaporated, the quality of drivers, cars and passenger safety deteriorated, and taxi oversupply exacerbated congestion on city streets.

This historical experience exhibits several parallels to Uber’s current business model, presaging the company’s dismal financial performance. The pre-regulated taxi industry was characterized by bounded demand, abundant supply, relatively undifferentiated service quality, extremely low barriers to entry, low customer switching costs, high variable costs and virtually no economies of scale. Many of these same conditions exist today for Uber and its competitors in the shared-ride market. While both then and now, consumers benefitted from low fares and short wait times, structural industry characteristics precluded profitable operations in both unregulated eras.

To “fix” this problem eighty years ago, New York City (and many other major metros) made a political decision to favor taxi companies and drivers at the expense of city residents. The Haas Act of 1937 established a licensing system, requiring a medallion for every taxi in New York City, and made it illegal to operate without one. This proved highly lucrative to the government, which sold the medallions in public auctions, and to successful bidders who could operate comfortably with the assurance of tight controls over competition.

Originally, New York set a limit of 16,900 taxi medallions, reducing that number to 11,787 after World War II. Fifty years later, the medallion cap was inched up to 11,900, and today, remains capped at 13,587. In contrast, absent regulatory oversight, the current number of shared ride cars operating in NYC has swelled to well over 60,000.

The impact of regulations arbitrarily capping taxi supply in NYC has been significant. While the population of New York City grew by 20% since the passage of the Haas Act in 1937, over the same period, the regulated cap on taxi medallions shrank by 20%. As a result, consumers have been subjected to longer wait times, higher fares, deteriorating vehicle quality and shoddy service, while incumbent taxi operators enjoyed escalating profits and soaring medallion values.

This is clearly evident in the secondary market for NYC taxi medallions, which serves as leading indicator of expected industry profitability. Between 1975 and 2013 (largely pre-dating Uber’s entrance), medallion prices in NYC increased by over 2,700%, far outpacing the growth of the Dow Jones stock price index.

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But Uber’s aggressive NYC launch in 2011 ushered in a return to unregulated car service expansion, dramatically improving urban mobility at lower prices, but dragging the industry back to an era of profit-killing competition. Not surprisingly, NYC medallion prices collapsed, from a peak of $1.4 million in 2014 to as little as $150,000 three years later. And, in sharp contrast to the growing value of taxi medallions prior to Uber’s launch, the stock price of Medallion Financial Inc. — a publicly traded company which finances and trades in taxi medallions – collapsed by 85% over the past five years, while the Dow Jones stock price index appreciated by 47%.

Medallion (MFIN) Stock Price vs Dow Jones
Medallion (MFIN) Stock Price vs Dow Jones
In historical context, Uber’s extraordinary losses are thus not just a case of growing pains of an ambitious Silicon Valley startup, but a reflection of the deep structural deficiencies in ride-hail industry economics. Prior to artificial regulatory supply caps, the unregulated taxi industry was unprofitable and subject to growing concerns over negative externalities. Uber is now facing the same relentless drag on its P&L.

Supporters of Uber’s unfulfilled potential often point to Uber’s first mover advantage, strong network effects, asset-light business model, continued revenue growth and adjacent business expansion opportunities as reasons to expect a near-term turnaround. But none of these factors reverse the fundamental weaknesses in Uber’s business model.

For example, conventional wisdom has held that Uber would enjoy a global winner-take-most outcome because of their outsized balance sheet and strong network effects. But to the extent that network effects exist, they are local, not global. For example, the fact that Uber enjoys an 89% market share in Tampa, doesn’t help them in Portland, where Uber’s market share is trending below 50%. In fact, Uber has struggled to achieve market share leadership in many large foreign markets, including China, India, SE Asia and Brazil. Moreover, while network effects do exist within each metro market, the benefits are significantly weakened by extremely low switching costs, which enable drivers and riders to utilize whichever ridesharing service offers the best deal on any given trip.

While Uber’s business model has created enormous value for consumers, propelling the company’s rapid growth, its extremely aggressive pricing simply doesn’t generate enough revenue to deliver attractive compensation to drivers and sizable profits to shareholders. By pricing its services 30% or more below comparable taxi fares and then retaining 25% of gross bookings for itself, Uber has squeezed the revenues available to compensate drivers, who are ultimately responsible for providing the labor, equipment, maintenance, insurance and fuel to serve consumers. There is nothing in Uber’s business model that promises to reduce the factor costs of its ridesharing service, nor are there inherent economies of scale that would lower unit operating costs with continued growth.

This leads to an inherent conflict between the business objectives of Uber and its drivers. Uber’s revenues are directly proportional to the number of trips it can facilitate, and thus the company has strong incentives to continuously scale its business. Drivers of course want to maximize their revenue per hour worked. But as Uber continues to recruit drivers, the revenue potential per driver inevitably declines. As the highest revenue-generating neighborhoods become increasingly saturated, new drivers are forced to seek less attractive service territories to find customers.

These business model dynamics underscore the bleak earnings outlook for Uber drivers. A recent study found that Uber’s net driver compensation in three US major metropolitan areas in late 2015 was only $8.77 – $13.17 per hour, and this was before Uber instituted significant fare cuts in 2016. Uber’s low and declining pay has been a leading cause of Uber’s low driver satisfaction and growing turnover, both in absolute terms and relative to its main competitor, Lyft.

There are two possible remedies to improve driver compensation, but both alternatives would undoubtedly harm Uber’s already tenuous economics. Uber could raise fares at its current revenue sharing split, or increase the driver share of gross revenues.

Given the structural characteristics of the ride share industry – limited perceived product differentiation, fare transparency, low consumer switching costs and loyalty, and intense competition– Uber has been understandably reluctant to unilaterally raise fares. In fact, Uber and Lyft have been engaged in a race to the bottom on fare cutting and price promotions, reminiscent of the pre-regulatory taxi industry of yore. But urban transport demand isn’t elastic, so ridesharing price cuts have harmed driver compensation, which was the issue at the heart of the heated argument between Travis Kalanick and an Uber driver last year, that became a viral media sensation.

As for raising drivers’ revenue share, Uber and its drivers are locked in a zero sum game that leaves little room for generosity on either side. In fact, Uber’s temporary profit margin improvement in 2016 (albeit still yielding steep losses) was primarily driven by its decision to cut driver compensation rates.

From its inception, Uber has consistently favored consumer satisfaction over driver welfare – for example, evidenced by its longstanding reluctance to allow in in-app tipping, which even now is poorly executed – which has taken a heavy toll on driver satisfaction and retention.

Recent studies have indicated that Uber’s U.S. driver churn has sharply increased this year, to rates as high as 96%. Needless to say, it’s hard (and costly) to maintain double-digit growth rates, when only 4% of mission critical, de facto employees stay on the job for more than a year. As a result, Uber has been forced into perennially aggressive recruitment efforts, offering signup bonuses that can run well in excess of $1,000 (on top of normal compensation) for new drivers.

There is little reason to expect near term relief in Uber’s escalating driver recruiting costs (including the expense to maintain hundreds of physical “greenlight hub” locations that provide onboarding support) in the coming years, especially since Uber faces vigorous competition from other enterprises also recruiting part-time drivers, including Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub and Amazon Flex.

Multiple management missteps have further hindered Uber’s performance, fueling growing distrust from customers, drivers and regulatory agencies. But Uber’s existential challenge remains its broken business model, which is increasingly testing the patience and confidence of its investors. At its current burn rate, Uber cannot survive more than two years without additional injections of capital, which is highly improbable at anything like its current valuation.

From the beginning, Uber made a calculated bet that it could achieve global domination, wiping out both incumbent taxi companies and competing shared ride providers, to be able to exercise monopoly pricing power in hundreds of metropolitan markets. But it now appears Uber has lost this bet in its headlong rush into an industry that has historically exhibited low profit potential.

Uber is hardly alone in its sisyphean quest for profitability. Every major ridesharing company in the world is still experiencing steep losses after five or more years of operation, including Lyft (U.S.), Ola (India), 99 (Brazil), and Didi Chuxing (China).

In Didi’s case, the company continues to lose (and raise) money despite its dominant market share, after buying out Uber’s Chinese operations 15 months ago. But reaffirming the low barriers to entry in this sector, other well capitalized competitors (UCAR, Meituan) have stepped up their operations, prolonging profit-killing competition for passengers and drivers in the Chinese ridesharing market.

There are undoubtedly defensible segments of the global rideshare market that can currently sustain profitable operations. And in the foreseeable but distant future, autonomous vehicle technologies may improve industry economics. But for now, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will need some serious soul-searching to rethink Uber’s soaring ambition and penchant to win-at-all-costs in all markets. On its current course, Uber’s bridge to global domination is simply a bridge too far.

Len ShermanContributor
I am an Executive in Residence and Adjunct Professor at Columbia Business School, teaching courses in business strategy and corporate entrepreneurship. Prior to my academic endeavors, I was a Senior Partner at Accenture, where I provided management counsel to CEO’s in a variety of industries, served as the president of two business units, and helped launch the firm’s corporate venture group as a General Partner, serving as a board member for five technology-based startups. Prior to these positions, I was a managing partner of J. D. Power and Associates, where I led the firm's management consulting practice, and was a partner at Booz, Allen & Hamilton with responsibility for its U.S. automotive practice. I am the author of If You’re In A Dogfight, Become A Cat! – Strategies for Long-Term Growth. For more visit http://www.lsherman.com.

Cita de CéSa

Una de las mayores estafas de este siglo, y con la connivencia de las instituciones.

Dónde está el VTC lover @arrozpavopollo