This is Why Uber will Fail
Michael Spencer
A.I. Writer, researcher and curator - full-time Newsletter publication manager.
Uber was once the darling of the disruption on-demand economy. Yet Uber continues to struggle and there are some serious signs it may not even exist in ten years.
Let's go over some of these shall we? After Softbank's buy-in, Uber likely isn't even the most valuable startup in the world. Meanwhile, after a scandal ridden 2017, Uber has suffered significant market-share loss to Lyft in key U.S. demographics, namely, places where young Millennials show a preference for Lyft's branding.
Globally it's becoming clear Didi will win in Asia, and even fight Uber in key regions such as Japan and Mexico in 2018. Uber lost $3.7 billion during its last three quarters. There I said it, but after a win in a legal settlement with Google, that's not even the worst part for Uber's future.
Uber will Lose the Self-Driving race to Waymo
Waymo is likely anywhere between 6 months to 18 months ahead of Uber in autonomous driving tech. This means they have a small window to launch a ride-sharing platform for the masses exclusively with self-driving vehicles.
Alphabet needs to go all-in to such an endeavor, otherwise Waymo will miss an incredible opportunity. The best way to defeat Uber is to disrupt their first-mover advantage with robotaxis. This of course will happen sooner than anyone imagines, because too much is at stake.
If Waymo fails to do this soon, Didi, Baidu, Uber and dozens of others will do it first. May the best robo-car win.
- Uber will face significant global competition vs. Didi that will likely rule Asia (a higher density region)
- Uber faces considerable competition in key U.S. cities from Lyft
- Uber could lose the race to self-driving fleets vs. Waymo
- Uber is losing around 1$ billion per quarter, which could eventually kill it given the above factors aren't in its favor.
The future will have no mercy for the likes of Travis or Dara. The bro-culture responsible for a climate of sexual harassment, duplicitous software that thwarted government regulators and taxi-killing Silicon valley greed, does not deserve to live.
Uber last week agreed to pay $245 million to settle the trade secrets case brought by Waymo, and many analysts were saying Uber got off on that one in a legal victory. However, Uber's true valuation now in 2018 is likely somewhere between $48 billion and $68 billion. It is becoming increasingly clear that the dog-eat-dog world Uber brought us, Uber won't likely be the big winner we all thought it would be.
Uber is not Amazon, Khosrowshahi is not Bezos and Uber has yet to really innovate anything of lasting value. With a business that is entirely replicable, by teams that know how to build a brand that is sustainable, without all the costly mistakes Uber has made, the autonomous vehicle could spell the end of Uber's glory. The robo-taxi democratizes transportation, and all that once made Uber so unique and differentiated, is about to evaporate in just three supremely (Uber) short years.
What do you think, was Uber born to fail?
The Avatar that will likely further usurp Uber domestically is a rather humble car.
- The Chrysler Pacifica is one car of choice for Waymo's service. It doesn't even need a pink moustache.
- As of February 2018, there's no reason to believe Didi isn't now worth more than Uber. Didi is valued at about $56 billion and also backed by SoftBank.
Waymo's real threat to Uber is that it will offer self-driving cars.
Consumers will trust self-driving cars because they are safer and will be considerably cheaper. So Waymo is the hands down favorite to be the first-mover into the robo-taxi industry, and if they do it properly (there's some doubt Google can do this), it should disrupt Uber's business model.
- Waymo will be releasing its own Waymo-branded ride sharing app later this year, likely by the summer of 2018.
We believe Waymo is the leader since Waymo has the lead in testing, with over 352,000 miles driven in California, representing 70.3% of the self-driven miles in the state. Already in 2018 we can see that where there's already "many" Ubers, there's only one Airbnb. These first-mover disruptors that focus on growth and scale, leave themselves vulnerable to be disrupted as they often never do become profitable. Uber's clock is running out, though I hope to see a Waymo Pacifica soon, because I never want to use an Uber ever again.
Waymo has doubled their number of autonomous miles, racking up nearly 2 million miles over a 12 month period. Today, Waymo vehicles have self-driven more than 4 million miles across 25 U.S. cities. If robots are supposed to do the heavy lifting of repetitive labor, I'm fully satisfied, I am one of those who would prefer to be driven by software than a person.
Waymo has to deploy as soon as possible, because as Didi and Lyft taken marketshare away from Uber in the years to come, Waymo has a brief window of opportunity to make this work for the future of Alphabet. Uber's demise, that's a prediction that for me is already written in stone; in the karma police of an accelerating exponential world moving at the speed of robot-taxis into the age of automation.
Uber played the bad guy to win, and now it's time others take over. When Softbank acquired a 20% stake in Uber, it was the beginning of the end. The proof of failure of a desperate company whose greed overwhelmed it where the balance of power is about to tip. Uber more than anyone, is entitled to the failure that they have coming.
#WaymoRideHailingService #UberVsWaymo #UberVsGoogle #UberVsDidi #SelfdrivingCars
Midwest Sedan and SUV service.
5 年There failure is imminent and personally and professionally can't wait because there will be a line miles long of people celebrating its demise and doing the undesirable on its proverbial grave. For the peoples lives its destroyed by under cutting the small business owner to the point of having to liquidate there assets just to maybe keep there homes, adding to traffic in every state there in by at least 30 percent, causing the price of commercial insurance to rise by 20 percent if not more because the money has to come from somewhere so why not commercially insured companies and drivers, they can afford it. They have no concerns about public safety just about how much money they can make off the driver's. Its almost like there trying to play your daddy who has lots of money and will help you with everything a car. A credit card or two discounts on pretty much anything just as long as you drive 14 hours a day and make less than minimum wage. No one is against making a living nor starting up a company, but do it right and professionally not like this. When uber fails, the world and the industry will be a better place.
Business Owner at Economy Taxi
5 年Uber could have been making billions instead of losing them years ago if the group would have realized it's real value to customers. I've been in the taxi business for over 20 years and the top questions from customers are how fast can you get here and how much will it cost. Uber had a great system for delivering a ride in less than 10 minutes. Then they blew it by discounting that value to the customer. All of this time they could have been making 30% more on each ride. It's a shame really. All of that brand recognition potential out the window.
Inspiring, enthusiastic professor of business communication, talent management, strategy, and leadership courses as a full-time educator at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Puebla
6 年It will be interesting to watch how the impact of self driving cars and the Didi competition here in Mexico and other Latin American countries play out.
Co-founder Phnk
6 年Sometimes I wonder if there is more crap on Twitter or facebook and then I open Linkedin and here a Smart Ass, Recognized Jackass has already written the death warrant of everything. I am not intelligent enough or prescient enough to predict Uber will fail, what I do know is that Waymo has the least chance of succeeding in self drive car - a battle already won by Tesla, for the futurists who just logged in from wherever they have been smoking Ganja. And I say this not because I know something about Waymo which other people don't, I say this because I have not seen Google succeed at anything but serving ads and stealing data - They could not make money from making Phones, They destroyed Nest - the first IOT company, nobody trusts them with their data and still they keep saying Google Cloud is the best and Tensorflow is the best AI known to man, the list is long - they could not even sell the Google Glass. So if someone claims Waymo will kill everybody including Uber - they are smoking Google brand hashish and they have no frigging clue that Google Management cannot make things work - at least not this management.