Great! Let's encourage drivers who can't afford a car to take out (in effect) a huge loan on an expensive car that they couldn't otherwise obtain, then make their more-affordable repayments conditional on working as a reduced-rights contractor for us. So this is basically indentured service then?
Can anyone explain to me what is so attractive about Uber?<p>To me, Uber is just taxi with smart phones. My opinion is that is that Uber is avoiding a lot of the bureaucracy and fees that real taxi companies are paying for their rights and things such as insurance. I always figured that once the taxi companies figure out the convenience of smart phones they will start to integrate that technology more aggressively and be able to fight Uber back.<p>But there must be something I'm not seeing.<p>> "The $258 million is an 86 percent chunk of Google Ventures’ $300 million dollar a year fund..."<p>That's a lot of money, and that's a large part of Google Ventures fund. What are they seeing that I'm not seeing? Is there a future vision of Uber that's going over my head?
<i>"Kalanick said drivers could expect to save anywhere from $100 to $200 on monthly payments, depending on the make and model of the car they’re buying."</i><p>I'm not from the US, so don't have an idea of car ownership costs, but is this that big a deal?