1y ago

Uber CEO balks after a reporter tells him the cost of his 2.9-mile Uber ride: 'Oh my God. Wow.'

www.yahoo.com Uber CEO balks after a reporter tells him the cost of his 2.9-mile Uber ride: 'Oh my God. Wow.'

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi estimated a 2.95-mile ride would cost $20 but was surprised to learn it actually cost $51, Wired reported.

Uber CEO balks after a reporter tells him the cost of his 2.9-mile Uber ride: 'Oh my God. Wow.'::undefined

102 comments

The fact that a 2.9 mi car ride costs $50 with a tip is fucking insane. This country is absolutely backwards when it comes to transportation. Everything is nearly car centric. Minimal options for alternatives.
- People who have never experience good public transport don't know what they're missing tbh. When I lived in Japan for a few months I could get around the whole city without much planning. It was so freeing not having to think about transportation. I think public transportation + last mile assistance (e-scooters, e-bikes etc.) is by far the most efficient an free transportation experience out there.
  
  I recently got a folding e-bike in a city with great public transport (a folding bike can be carried along at any time, regular bikes only outside rush hours). Now I can be anywhere in the city within about 20mins, which is very liberating. I'm actually faster than going by car due to being able to bypass traffic jams, and not even including the 20mins+ needed for finding a parking spot.
- It used to cost far less in NYC until they made them be tlc.
  
  What's TLC?
- Bear in mind this was in Manhattan, one of the most transit oriented places in the world. You could go that distance by subway for $2.75, 24 hours a day. Either the journalist was being stupid, or overlaps more likely, wanted to prove a point.
  
  NYC might be the most "transit-oriented" city in America, but in the world? Not then close. Not by a mile.
  Most big cities in Europe have a mix of buses, subways, and trams that make taking public transport a no-brainer. That includes Eastern Europe, too. That's also true of any big city in China, Korea, and Japan.
  
  You are totally right, but all the downvotes show how biased Lemmy is.
  Also you clearly wrote "one of..." not THE most transit oriented places in the world, and yet the other person clearly missed that part.

In a faint way, I might almost frame this as a positive thing.
The gig workers driving Uber vehicles are generally the sort of people that absolutely need it. And, especially in a hub like New York City, $50 fares should be the sort of thing that pushes people into making use of either the bike share system or subway, rather than promoting increased traffic congestion at peak times. And yes, I am aware in many cases that results in increased trip times; which should be a motive to invest further in these systems to make them faster and more convenient.
I don't think it's just Uber - America will at some point have to wake up to the expected costs of its heavily service-focused industries, the value of an individual person's time, and of one's own personal vehicle for a trip.
- Actually I live in NYC and often public transportation, especially bikes, are faster to get around Manhattan than car services. Outer boroughs need more infrastructure though. Places like Queens and Brooklyn as you get away from the city become harder to navigate without a car or car service and taxis can be rarer
  
  As someone from rural Scotland, hearing Brooklyn described as 'getting away from the city' is unintentionally hilarious!
  
  I visited NYC this spring with my wife and we took precisely one Uber ride, from the airport to our hotel. It was $80. We then proceeded to spend less than $80 total the rest of our several day trip crisscrossing all over Manhattan on public transit, including back to the airport to leave. Public transit was faster, cheaper, and easier than the Uber, for sure.
  
  Doesnt sound like you know the outer boroughs that well if you think we need cars in Broolyn. Brooklyn as a whole is very well covered with subway and bus lines. You simply don't need a car in Broolyn. Queens on the other hand is different. Although majority of the population in Queens has access to subway, a good chunk of the territory has limited access to subway lines. They can rely on public bus but that's not always convenient. For those parts of Queens, I agree, you MIGHT need a car. Even staten island has its own subway line and busses. Most people on Staten Island has a car because it's just more convenient to get out of the island.
- Just how much is a banana, anyway?
  
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- The reason fatrs are up is because instead of subsidising the trips (i.e. anti-competitive behaviour), now UBER is taking a massive cut to make back all the VC money.
  The fares should have never been dirt cheap to begin with.

Does a CEO even know the value of $20 or $51? Isn't that the same as $0 to them?
- It's one banana Michael. What could it cost, $5?
  
  $10*
- Imho people that earned a lot of money see more difference between $0.20 and $0.51 than others - being more conscious about the value of the goods without being weighted down by the costs to simply exist

Went to a concert at an arena about 3 miles from my house, to get there was about eight bucks to go home was 60.
- Yep. Went to Disneyland a year ago and the trip there was very affordable. The trip home was 3-4x higher since it was closing time.
  
  I mean that's how the market works isn't it? It's the best way to attract more drivers to those sort of locations.
  That said public transport should be in place for situations like this so we don't have 50 cars leaving but 1 bus instead...
- Why didn't you walk?

Uber’s net profit for the twelve months ending March 31st, 2023 was $-3.36bn. That’s negative 3.36 billion dollars. They posted their first ever operating profit today. August 1st, 2023.
So yeah, really cool company. Not at all some sort of horrifying demon of modern capitalism…
- Pretty sure Uber’s sole existence is owed to cheap debt and a bubble in venture capital. Them and WeWork soaked investors for all they were worth and never gave a flying fig about profitability because there was always some one willing to float a cheap loan
  
  They got investment because they were building a monopoly first. It really just tells you how valuable monopolies are if it wasn't obvious enough already. It's more reason why we can't let monopolies happen.
- I really don't know how they are not profitable. They must waste a shit ton on self driving technology. They effectively killed a large portion of the taxi industry while now costing more. It's not as if their app is done miracle app these days. The few taxi services that are left tend to basically have a similar app.
  
  That was the goal. Use unlimited VX money to kill taxis and then get a monopoly. Inflation came at the right time I guess, they can increase prices by a ton and we just blame it on inflation

“from downtown New York City to the West Side”
$50 is what you’d expect if you lived in nyc, or been there enough
- Not from the area, what’s the deal/context?
  I’m assuming it’s a traffic cluster fuck?
  
  It’s one of the densest, most populated 2.9 miles in the world. The route takes you through the core of manhattan/nyc.
  
  It's 5 to 7 miles, possibly in traffic. 20 to 50 minutes, depending on the time of day. It's like $30, but could double during rush hour or any popular time of day.
  So yeah, $50 whenever you want to go. $30 in the middle of the night.

Next ask him how much a $10 meatball sub delivered from 2 miles away should cost.
- "With Uber, the vast majority of your fare is going to your driver. Earnings per week for our drivers are up 40, 50 percent over the past four years, because that is the cost of time and the cost of labor. I think that's positive."
  Unless you are working in the gastronomy, then your work and time is worth shit

I always thought Uber was supposed to be like carpooling.
That's ~4.74 kilometers, by the way.
- That was the original idea. Pick people up going the way you're going. Minimal extra mileage, and get paid for the small inconvenience.
  But now people are driving just to drive.

I had to use this service one time, to pick up my wife from the hospital in the middle of the night. The guy never even picked her up and I still had to pay 50 goddamn dollars. Fuck this company.
- Did you try to sue them or get a refund?
  
  Sue? For $50?!
  It could easily cost $5000 in legal fees just to take them to court!
  
  Lol what no. It took months of un subscribing to get them out of my inbox too though, it was ridiculous.
  
  Sue lmao
  
  Why spend another $50 in time lost just to get nothing? That's insult to injury. :-D
  
  Are you dumb?

These prices are set via algorithm, and time of day seems to be a huge part of it. My 2.5 mile trip in Washington DC on a Thursday morning at 7:30 was $55.
- There was speculation that the algo takes several features into account not just time. Things like battery life, distance from frequent locations, etc. So for instance: profile is a young lady, she is on 10% battery and is several miles from home at an entertainment hub like a nightclub/concert so jack the fare up cos she’ll take it regardless, type stuff.
  I used to have a very unreliable Jeep that would break down for weeks at a time. I bit the bullet and ubered to work. I have screenshots showing the fare climbing over the course of a week to six times the original price for the same trip as the algo learned that I needed to work and did not have a car.
  
  Jesus Christ that's horrible. We'll need to now make something like virtualbox for Android to isolate these shitty ass apps from knowing system details and shit.
  EDIT: We all need to go check our uber transactions to see if cost per ride corresponded to life events.
  
  Wouldn't have a cab costed the same every day? I'm curious as to how that would compare.

"It was 10 am on a sunny weekday"... supply and demand. Take the number of people wanting a ride and divide by the number of drivers available, and in some way that number will be the multiple.
Area will matter (Apparently NYC), but Uber is a gig economy, people use it as a side hustle, so during the day, many of them are probably working another job. Not to mention 2.9 miles in NYC isn't like 2.9 miles in Champaign Illinois, that can be a long ride.
But there are a ton of factors, maybe there was no drivers in the area, maybe everyone was busy, but you still took the ride, so obviously it wasn't too crazy. Uber will continue to charge what they can, but I'm sure the number of available drivers willing to take a fare for that price (The price Uber offers them, not the end user price), will always matter.
Infinitenonblondes in the comments talks about a 3 mile ride, 8 bucks to go there, 60 bucks to leave, because it was a concert. The demand for a ride right after a concert is going to be at record level peaks... of course it's going to go through the roofs.

2.9 miles isn't even far. You could just walk.
- I mean, it's an hour's walk for the average person.
  And that's assuming safe neighborhoods, actual sidewalks, good street lighting (if at night), pleasant weather etc.
  Not to mention shoes that are actually comfortable for long walks. You'd be surprised how many people don't have that kind of shoes, and an hour's walk in their regular shoes would give them blisters.
- Only if fully able-bodied and there's safe footpath present, but yeah, more of us should just walk.
  
  That’s an hour walk- one way- for the the “average” person.
  Throw in climate hazards- winter where I live, that walk is happening in -10f temperatures, probably with wind blasting enough to be deadly.
  In summer, we typically have temperatures reaching 98-101 f for about a week with muggy-as-hell 80’s for several months. Also enough to be deadly.
  Further, let’s say hypothetically, that’s a grocery run. Frozen goods out for that long pose a food safety risk.unless your lugging an ice packed cooler or something… which kinda sounds like my personal version of hell… that’s also likely to, you know, be deleterious to one’s health.
  (Okay so maybe you luck out and just get the squirts.)
  
  People who can't walk usually can't drive either. Stop with this irrelevant "able body" argument.
- Yep, have walked such distances semi regularly
- Not if where you live is a car-centric hellhole with uneven, badly kept or sometimes even nonexistent sidewalks, and where cars are eager to run you over at every intersection because they have a "Why are you walking? You must be a poor so fuck you." Mentality
  
  I live in Houston. Probably the least pedestrian friendly city on earth. I would still walk over paying that.

Some popular neoclassical economic models rely on the "No-Ponzi-Scheme" condition being true. Essentially meaning that Capital can't become negative because there are no ponzi schemes which affect the economy.
This seems like that assumption is just one of the wrong ones.

Archive link for this article: https://archive.is/OtCBR

If what he says is true, that it's going up because of driver pay, that's good at least. Uber at least has competition in Lyft, and both have a lot more markets to enter around the world by chipping away the established local taxi businesses, which can also compete by dropping their prices...
Overall I think Uber is a net positive. But $50 is a pretty ridiculous fee.
- Uber has engaged in rampant employee misclassification, even going as far as changing California’s constitution to get away with it. Shit like that should not be allowed
- Lol. I also have a bridge to sell you
- If

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