Lyft

Robot(taxi)s Are Coming! No seriously! 

Uber & Lyft Earnings Under Pressure from Waymo, Robotaxis. (Business Insider)

Waymo’s robotaxis are undercutting Uber and Lyft prices in Phoenix while matching quality. It’s no longer just about autonomous technology — it’s about making the economics work at scale. This is a sign of the times as more AI-powered machines become part of our lives.

Key Points:

  • In Phoenix, Waymo’s self-driving rides are consistently priced 20% to 30% below traditional ride-hailing services, while maintaining comparable wait times and service quality.
  • The expansion to Los Angeles marks a crucial test for Waymo’s scalability. L.A.’s complex traffic patterns and diverse environments present new challenges. Yet, Waymo’s confident pricing strategy suggests it has cracked fundamental operational efficiency issues.
  • Waymo still employs remote operators and maintenance staff, the ratio of support personnel to active vehicles continues to decrease. This improving efficiency ratio, combined with the elimination of driver costs, creates a compelling economic

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My Reading Picks, Technology
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What Work

Uber and Lyft, in response to a California court ruling that all drivers must be reclassified as employees with benefits, are threatening to quit doing business in the state. Putting the news, and the legal posturing of Uber and Lyft aside, the judgment and its possible impact on other gig-economy companies that rely on independent contractors will be a quagmire. But it raises more profound questions that go far beyond these startups, and our society. 

How should we be thinking about work? 

Why do we continue to classify work as either full-time employment or independent contractor? Why isn’t there a grey zone in between these two qualifications? Why do we assume that work should be tied to specific tasks and the amount of time spent doing that task? 

More importantly, what is work? And where is work coming from in 2020 and beyond? 

A lot of politicians and their sycophants talk about

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Technology
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The Price is Right

I have to admit, it is great to see the initial public offerings of various technology companies come to market and create a level of excitement. Lyft, Uber, and Pinterest are hogging the headlines, but they are also helping to kickstart the financial engine that makes Silicon Valley hum. Of course, not everyone is enthusiastic. If you read the popular press, you might get a feeling that the IPO parade is made of money-losing companies, and this is just like 1999. You might also come across articles about the soon-to-be millionaires who will ruin everything in San Francisco. (The Bold Italic estimates that we might see 6,000 or so new millionaires added to the million or so already in that special club.)

I understand why there is general unease, but let’s not forget about the inevitability of the Internet. We have willfully enslaved ourselves to the network, and the convenience

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Technology
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Google: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose

Now that Lyft is a publicly traded company, and Uber has filed its S-1, it is becoming pretty obvious that Google is the big winner in the on-demand mobility sweepstakes. In 2017, it invested $500 million in Lyft at about $39.75 a share, and at present, that is close to $750 million. Google had also invested about $258 million in Uber in 2013 before things got awkward between the two companies.

So, if Uber goes public at $100 billion market capitalization, Google’s 5.2 percent stake will be worth $5.2 billion. Later, Google’s Waymo sued Uber, and the two companies settled, with Waymo getting 0.34 percent ownership in Uber—or about $245 million. That is about $340 million or so if the company goes public at a $100 billion valuation.

Now, that’s a nice way for Google to pay for all the money it needs to spend on its autonomous vehicle adventures.

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Technology
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Uber & HealthCare

Last night, author Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) tweeted about Uber’s new partnership with healthcare groups and hospitals, by commenting that Uber invented an ambulance. It is easy to understand why Uber deserves the snark. They have not painted themselves in glory and behavior that was worthy of applause. They have become a symbol of corporate dastardliness.

But even from that context, Anand’s tweet (since deleted) made no sense. Nowhere did Uber claim that it was inventing an ambulance. Instead, all the press release said that Uber was working with healthcare groups and hospitals to make it easy to get Uber in advance for patients who need to travel for medical visits.

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Technology
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Fixing the “roads of hell” created by Uber & Lyft

Ever since I wrote about the traffic chaos created by Uber & Lyft, I have been thinking about how we can use technology to understand the extent of the problem, and then using other sets of technology to fix the problems and avoid regulatory challenges. After a while, I believe computer vision and data analytics are the right tools to make this happen. Here is how. 

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Technology
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Why Uber & GM (& CarCos) will have a head-on collision 

Every morning, I wake up and make a promise to myself — write, don’t just tweet. And yet, I find myself tweeting and getting dragged into conversations where the brevity of the medium leads to unfinished thoughts, poorly constructed sentences and more importantly an increased odds of being misunderstood and/or getting dragged down into a conversation with half life of a bubble on the surface of a pond.

The one and perhaps the redeeming quality of blogging is that you can stretch and flex your writing muscles, and finish a thought. Some people say that the deeper you go, the longer there are odds that people will read, re-read and absorb what you have to say.

And then on the other hand you have this world where we are in such a rush that we barely read anything – often convincing ourselves that just because we have shared, retweeted, liked

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Musings
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