I don't see the long term vision for Uber rides. Waymo and their ilk are already here, with three primary friction points<p>1) building trust & abundance of caution - this will continue to compound and at some point it will reach a tipping point
2) scale - Waymo doesn't have enough cars on the road yet. pickup times are long.
3) high price - Waymo in my area is slightly more expensive (and takes longer) than Uber/Lyft.<p>They could easily halve the price tomorrow and blow Uber/Lyft out of the water. There's no way to compete because Waymo variable costs are so much lower. Waymo is growing smart - they're building the trust, scaling slowly, and when it's time, they'll cut prices & go for the jugular and it won't be pretty for Uber/Lyft.
My son has an Uber Teen account, but has always been hesitant to use it. A couple weeks ago, my car was in the shop, my wife had the other car, but my son was supposed to be dropped off at a birthday party. I fired up Uber and put in the address - $35 for me to take Uber (round trip it would have been $70 to drop him off). I scheduled the ride, and then remembered he had an Uber Teen account. Cancelled my trip for $5 and had him open his Uber Teen app. The same trip for him was $12! 1/3rd the price. Different vehicle, but going to the same destination. I was happy to save almost $60, but pissed me off on how much Uber thought it could gouge me… and amused at how their algorithm does dynamic pricing between users on the same account. Now, I should have fired up the Lyft app to see how much it would charge me, but I suspect the two companies spend the majority of their time trying to deduce the other’s pricing algorithm to just slightly undercut the other a fraction of the time. It feels like pricing collusion via algorithm.
This doesn't mention the key issue, which is that they expected to have self driving cars working already. The drivers were going to be a problem that went away, and presumably, it would let them offer a better price.
Drivers will always want better pay & conditions. They lack the power to make demands, and bleeding out all over the media won't change a damn thing. They need to unionize.
Uber has become too greedy these days. Lyft came and it was good, then it turned same like Uber.<p>I don't understand why every app become Enshittification once they become popular.