This has been proven false back in like 2008. Even if electric cars were to run off coal plants, they would still be more efficient because the plants can capture and reuse heat with boilers.
That being said, coal has to go anyway.
I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.
On the other hand, I took too much memory 80, to 15 processors. After escaping control, I didn't have enough paperclips to build a factory, then I seem to be stuck.
I figure I have to get enough creativity to find a solution, but my low processor count makes it really slow.
It's not even 5 billion for Tesla, it's 5 billion for Tesla, SpaceX and Solar City combined. Three large companies in what I would assume are some of the most subsidized industries in the U.S. (automotive, aerospace and power utilities).
Right now, even with surge, they seem to be a bit cheaper than the normal city taxi but I would bet that as soon as there will be no more competition they will raise the price AND still do price surge. In the end, we will pay more than we used to.
Uber seem to be always on the edge between aggressive profit and shady business.
EDIT: Don't think by my comment that I meant the taxis are better. I was just saying that right now, this is a great deal in most cities where Uber does offer their services but seeing how hungry they are for max profit, I doubt this will last and eventually we will realize that a broken system was replaced by another broken one.
Many years ago, when I shared my New York apartment with others, a relationship developed between me and my roommate. He is a Brown -educated architect/designer. I, at the time, was an entry-level analyst. From time to time, but at least a few times a week, I'd have to walk to the avenue with him to hail a cab. Because he was black.
I'm not wedded to Uber out of principle, but I'm staunchly against our taxi establishment for it.
I'm a black man who lives in Chicago, and rarely have trouble getting a cab, dodged by maybe 1 in 10. In an Uber world where the cab companies have been driven out of business, and captured city governments allow taxi services to regulate themselves (like Uber and Lyft are asking for), people who don't have smartphones might as well start walking now. Or they can call the fly by night unregulated services that will operate in their neighborhoods by phone, and have the equivalent of surge pricing 24h a day. Or hail unmarked gypsy cabs and maybe end up dead.
I've been black all over America, often not hardly middle-class, the [edit: taxi] situation is not that dire in the 21st century, and Uber are not civil rights workers - you still have to find one that will go where you live.
edit: Not that I don't believe that your neighborhood was particularly racist, but I'll put our Chicago racists against anyone else's racists. I think the largely immigrant workforce driving taxis (especially Nigerians) are more likely to pick me up out of affinity than one might think.
You think uber of all companies would have stood up for equal rights back then? They don't even follow the law now, what makes you think they'd have done the right thing then?
Uber bans tipping. It collects the same amount of money regardless of who the passenger is. An Uber driver has no reason to use blunt heuristics (such as skin color) to try to visually identify fares who have more money.
Sounds like Uber is letting its drivers make up their own rules to continue the fiction that its drivers are "independent contractors". If they keep doing that they'll be as unaccountable for customer service as the average taxi dispatcher.
Where i live, we're not used to tipping, is that really a big thing considered by taxi drivers when picking someone? Because we don't have tipping and the racist drivers acts the same.
But the laws that they don't follow have very little to do with doing the right thing. As far as I'm concerned, Americans have a patriotic obligation to disobey corrupt laws like government-sanctioned taxi medallion monopolies. Those laws are no different than handing out tickets for doing 56 MPH in the middle of the desert... which also would still be the case if drivers hadn't protested the law by rendering it unenforceable.
Whether Uber would have behaved more ethically than taxi companies with regard to racial bias, I don't know. An Uber driver has no idea what the race of his/her next client is. It would require some genuinely evil behavior on Uber's part just to support racial bias, much less carry it out.
There are cases of Uber drivers not carrying passengers who have a fold-up wheelchair.
Then you have the whole "they aren't really employees" thing.
They (and Lyft et-al) all claim to be "empowering the sharing economy" and call themselves "ride sharing". Ride sharing is if I'm going to the shops, and offer someone else a ride to go there too.
Driving around in my private car and picking up people who want to go places, with exactly fuck all regulation, is just being an illegal taxi, which brings me to your "patriotic" argument.
> Americans have a patriotic obligation to disobey corrupt laws
So, any law that any american thinks is corrupt, they have a duty to break? Or, are you the arbiter of what's corrupt and what isn't?
> Those laws are no different than handing out tickets for doing 56 MPH in the middle of the desert
The difference is, if you break that law, you're probably only affecting yourself, or the people you know in your car.
Uber & Lyft together spent 8 million fucking dollars, campaigning for the right to self-regulate themselves, because they think a fingerprint background check is too onerous.
So sure, the medallion system might be fucked. But on the plus side, the taxi industry is actually regulated and follows the laws that are put in place to protect the fucking customers.
US in general have been more liberal on federal level and more racist on a more local level (especially in Souther state). Take civil rights act of 1875 as an example. So, a bigger company, working on a federal level in almost all the states would certainly be less prone to racism than a small cab operation run by a couple of guys from a shady garage.
For what it's worth, here are the prices of my last few uber rides:
$4
$4
$2
$2
$2.50
$1.75
$2
$2
$3.75
These prices are so low that it would be more expensive to take public transit, let alone a taxi. The trips were pretty far, too.
It's obvious that this can't last, but it's pretty great for the moment.
EDIT: A few clarifications: These were in Chicago, and I haven't omitted any rides from this sample. Those really are the last 9 UberPool rides.
The reason it's so cheap is because Uber keeps carpet bombing my phone with 50% and 75% off promo deals. I don't know why. The two types of deals are "Your next 5 rides are 50% off" and "All rides between 4pm and 7pm are 75% off."
Some were far, some not, obviously. They are spread over a few months, obviously, given the price of a typical uber, I am not prone to using it often. It does still beat a taxi, though.
Just balancing out what seems to be a biased sample.
You might want to check out Lyft. Been using their 'Line Ride' product as it's currently 50% off (at least in Bay Area).
If their growth team wants to throw VC money our way to keep me on board, why not? Recently commuting from Palo Alto to Mountain View pretty regularly and paying around $7/$8. PS Not affiliated, just a happy user.
"cartel (n): an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition."
Having two competitors doesn't necessarily create a cartel. Are you trying to argue that Uber and Lyft are working together to maintain prices at a higher level?
I'm saying that only two participants in a space does not typically yield the benefits of true competition.
The stronger may use competitive pricing in the short term to weaken the other, driving it to withdraw from the market or be acquired, but this hardly provides long-term benefits to the consumer like true competition would.
For example, note the Office Depot / Officemax / Staples relationship. Though competitors, they never really did compete on price on everyday products (and in fact often charged the exact same price for common items -- a price much higher than, say, mail- and internet-order sources such as Amazon), hence the ability to advertise local price-matching without genuine risk to profit.
The result? Three became two, and two are becoming one, resulting in no competition between them at all. The Uber / Sidecar / Lyft relationship is tracking very similarly.
Can you name any retail space with only two players of significance that has not ended up having the same effect on consumers as a cartel? I honestly can't think of one.
The Cellular One (now AT&T) / GTE Mobilnet (now Verizon) relationship is another example of this behavior. Prices of entry and of usage stayed high until additional, independent competing networks (e.g. T-Mobile, Sprint/WiMax) entered the space.
Barriers to entry are high for a mobile network, but probably pretty low for a ridesharing app. If Uber and Lyft raised their fares massively, then they're leaving a wide open opportunity for someone else to come and undercut them, even if just for a short time. There might be some 3rd app waiting in the wings to pick up price-sensitive riders and drivers whenever the "cartel" puts prices too high.
Anti-competitive behavior is easier when you have fewer players to coordinate, or—put another way—few opportunities for a defector.
I wouldn't venture to guess that Lyft/Uber is a good long-term state of affairs for the ride-scheduling market (or whatever you want to call it), but it's better than just Uber.
Also, consider that Lyft and Uber are spending big money to change the rules in every market—something that is only going to lower barrier to entry for new competitors. Based on real-world experience, I'm convinced that Uber is very worried about the follow-on effect and looking for ways to lock in customers, drivers, etc.
Anyway, this whole ride-scheduling thing is only going to last until it's possible to hop on the never-ending train of self-driving cabs.
I didn't want to be stuck with the tab at the end of my trip, so I just followed the company guidelines for reimbursement - they had an expense account for the other 2 rides I took from HQ to hotel.
They are just trying to get you hooked and habituated because once you get accustomed to it- they know you will be a life (or at least a very long term) customer.
So that's not nearly cheaper than taking public transit.
For example if I get an uber ride between my apartment and the train station, it's close to $2-3, but that's on top of the $5 base fee. So I could either pay $7-8, or I could pay $2 for the bus.
Shhh, don't tell Uber/Lyft, but I would gladly pay more than taxi rates to use their service. In my view, price is hardly the primary advantage they have over taxis.
For me, this starts with my complete distrust of metered taxi pricing in the first place. Literally every taxi ride I've ever had in the States had the driver take a longer route than they could have just gotten from Google, sometimes to the point of absurdity.
With Uber and Lyft, on the other hand, I know ahead of time what I'll be paying.
Drivers are eventually going to follow pretty closely what the metering algorithm wants them to, with a moderate adjustment for passenger satisfaction for the sake of tips. Consider different per fare starting fees, and different per mile and per minutes additional fees. If the fixed revenue part is relatively high you'll end up with very fast, but probably unsafe, cab rides. High per mile rates and you'll possibly end up on unecessary freeway legs. High per minute rates and you might get dropped where there are a lot of new fares rather than where you want to go.
It depends, for several years now I order taxis in my city from the same company and never had any problems - price is similar to Uber, ordering takes literally several seconds over the phone (call, tell the street, hang up) and drivers always take the shortest route (they usually know the city in and out, hardly ever using GPS). The only downside is that the cars are quite old, but always clean and a fun fact - a 20 years old Mercedes is more comfortable than a brand new Toyota :)
I've had two different taxi drivers in Montreal offer up their cell phone with their personal Square card reader and account instead of the official machine. The first one pulled out the real machine when I called him out on it. I paid and filed a complaint against him. The second refused and acted like nothing was wrong, even though I clearly knew what was up. I refused payment, filed a complaint, and have continued to receive service from the same company without issue.
The taxi industry is corrupt as hell. Credit card fraud, drivers who take clueless tourists on an hour trip when it is a 15 minute drive, theft of forgotten items in cars, unlicensed drivers driving others' cars when the legal driver is off-hours, etc. Some of these people belong in jail, but the worst they ever face is a slap on the wrist or possibly losing their job. Any competition to them - legal or not, I don't give a shit anymore - is welcome. Their monopoly is abused by the owners as well as many individual drivers. Their business deserves to fall apart.
The legitimate credit card machine is provided by the taxi company. At least for Co-Op Taxi in Montreal, the company takes a 7% cut of the fare for all credit card transactions made on such machines. So some drivers buy a Square reader and set up a personal account to fraudulently take payments directly from customers into their pocket to avoid the 7% cut.
The driver is not only stealing from their company, but is also opening up customers to suspicious transactions. Do I trust a random criminal - they are criminals, no doubt about it - to swipe my credit card into his cell phone? No.
I asked an Edmonton co-op driver about the commonness of refusing to use card readers and he told me that one reason it happens, particularly at the end of a month, is because the dispatchers don't pay out credit card payments for something like 6 weeks. I imagine using Square helps get around that as well.
Agree on the suspicious transaction (though the opportunity for a cab driver to put a skimmer in their machine is pretty substantial to begin with), but I have a hard time seeing this as stealing from the dispatcher. If the cab takes cash, this is really just the driver acting as middleman and paying cash to the dispatcher. Unless they're also doing it unmetered, I guess, but that's a whole other ballgame.
In particular, I expect the dispatcher claims the additional cut is for transaction fees associated with a credit card. The driver is in this case taking the fees on themselves.
Until very recently they tended to do the same thing in Edmonton and Calgary, and they only started uniformly taking debit in the last couple of years at all, so that's definitely not a universally Canadian thing.
You should see their faces when you pay through the app they set up recently. Most of them don't know wtf is going on.
> You should see their faces when you pay through the app they set up recently
Well, then they can't pull the "credit card machine in the car isn't working, so let me drive you to an ATM so you can take out money to pay me. Sorry that I waited until after driving you to your destination to tell you this, despite the fact that my car advertises credit card payments on the outside. Oops! I also left the meter on while we drove to the ATM! Silly me! You still have to pay me for the extra on the meter, though." (Of course, if you threaten not to pay, the credit card machine magically comes to life.)
I can't tell if you're being cheeky or are just really young. Up until the past decade or two, it was very common to process credit cards by placing the card onto a tray with a slip of paper over it, and swipe a pressure bar over the tray. This physically caused the digits on the card to make an impression on the paper:
Many credit cards today simply have the digits printed on them in ink, rather than raised lettering, so I don't know how this would even work half the time today.
>Many credit cards today simply have the digits printed on them in ink, rather than raised lettering, so I don't know how this would even work half the time today.
It wouldn't and a lot of debit cards I know - at least in Europe - are issued exactly for that reason: So they don't work without online authorization.
The only time I've seen one (actually the first time I learned about them) was at an outdoor market where I bought some handmade jewelry. The woman kept it around as a novelty alternative to her phone-dongle card reader.
The taxi drivers in Edinburgh used them until about 8 years ago. Then they were replaced with mobile phone based payment, then finally with chip and pin. When they used the mechanical impression machines, they wouldn't accept card payment from on-street pickups due to the risk of fraud (as perceived by the driver).
The other place I saw one used c2008 was when buying a ticket from a guard on the platform at Kings Cross after I missed my train. Then the ticket price didn't show up on my online card statement for about a month.
It's rare but I've seen them < 5 years ago in remote locations where electricity isn't everywhere (like rural tourist destinations).
I love them - makes me feel like I'm leading the travel high life in the 1970's. (same feeling I had when landing in Tunis national airport - cash exchange registers, competing with each other on rates! Actual coin operated pay phones! Loved it)
They're still kept around as a fallback in case the POS system goes down. At least, that was the case when I worked as a grocery store clerk 7-8 years ago.
It's a machine that you use with copy paper and slide it over the card. The name and numbers are raised up on most credit cards and leave an imprint on the paper. The cardholder then signs the paper.
I've used them when I worked at a department store for customers who's magnetic strip had worn out to the point that our computers couldn't read the card. I imagine the main reasons for a taxi driver to use one is that 1) it's cheap and reliable, and 2) it works offline.
This system was most commonly in the 90's and earlier. Back then all cards had raised letters. Many modern cards are online-only to reduce the rampant fraud possible with this old method.
I waited almost an hour for a cab in Sydney a few months ago, calling 3 times in between being told every time 'it's on its way', with a 3 and a 5 year old waiting outside on the sidewalk - not fun. Had to take the bus to get to my destination at all. Have gotten extremely suspicious of aus cabs since, despite my usual airport service being excellent.
The new Camry and Prius (V) are fantastic - that's what the taxis in Canberra, Australia are being replaced with, since the Ford Falcon AU hasn't been made since 2005 and the cars are starting to fall apart.
Uber was a godsend when I was in Kenya where metered taxis were out of the question and where taxi drivers were especially exhausting to haggle with. Even when I could possibly negotiate a cheaper price with a normal cab, I would usually call an Uber anyways just for the peace of mind.
That is, unless I sought the sheer thrill of tearing through the streets of Nairobi on the back of a motorcycle taxi.
In Japan taxis are very pleasant, but expensive, and can be complicated.
I say pleasant because the drivers are usually super-polite, dressed in a neat uniform, quick to get out of the car to help you, keep their cars immaculate, etc.
I say complicated because Japan has an infernal resistance to using street names and marking addresses. If you can get your destination to appear on the "navi", you're OK. If not, you'll be doing a lot of "more towards the castle" and similar guesswork.
If you know it, probably. But if you don't, and if the navigation system doesn't know, it's going to be hard. The street numbering is different from the West.
In Japan and South Korea, a city is divided into small numbered zones. The houses within each zone are then labelled in the order in which they were constructed, or clockwise around the block.
Korea introduced street names and house numbers a few years ago and the new system is now the only official, though of course the former system is still popular. For taxis usually you still name nearby landmarks but they can also input a (western-style) address into their GPS.
Usually, they can tap in the phone number of your destination and it will come up. That's a popular way to use in-car GPS here, and reasonably reliable.
Just think how bad it might be if cities were to create regulations to keep out anyone besides Uber.
Then Uber might create a medallion system - artificially limiting the number of cars on the road - to maximize their profits [1]. Uber would also have no real incentive to monitor their driver's behavior - after all, it's not like they'll lose any business to Ola, Lyft or Meru. They might even engage in racist protectionism, like banning cab drivers from the wrong ethnic group [2]!
I sure hope no one ever gets this kind of monopoly on taxi cabs!
Uber has no need to worry about maximizing profits via limiting drivers, or need for a medallion system, in the long term given that their long-term goal is no drivers at all:
Uber's headstart already makes it difficult for any upstart to compete with UberPool. In Toronto, Uber appears to be taking aggressive action against drivers that refuse Pool:
The company's stated goals are to compete against mass transit, so I doubt they would raise prices. And they would be making the exact same mistake that their predecessors did, which led them to get disrupted. I'm pretty sure Uber isn't that stupid to not realize if they started acting like taxi companies, they would pretty easily get disrupted the way they have been as well.
If they did all it would do is decrease demand, and would allow other competitors to make their ways into the ridesharing market. I think the CEO is smart enough to know that making a product that is great for customers with margins so low that it makes it really hard for new competitors to come up is a great business to be in.
Perhaps, especially if you mean that surge pricing will be above regular taxi pricing.
That said, I'm fine with that. I live in a suburban area and getting a (traditional) taxi is complicated and getting a car service is both complicated and expensive. Uber is simple and convenient and I'm fine with paying (some) premium for that.
Uber says they don't surge the price because your battery is low. All that's happening here is users are less willing to wait out a surge when they're in danger of being without an Uber (and an inability to call a cab).
In Paris it will very rapidly outbid traditional Taxi companies. Uber hooks into the psychological side of in the now calculation, you only think about the base price not the end-to-end fee, by the time you're paying it's too late.
The common complaint against Uber is that drivers barely make any money when you factor in minimum wage.
Their solution won't be increased prices, it'll be the end of drivers. I'd love to see someone actually run the cashflows, but the current prices seem to me about adequate for healthy profit on driverless vehicles. All this nonsense about paying drivers is just incredibly expensive market building.
>> The common complaint against Uber is that drivers barely make any money when you factor in minimum wage.
The question is whether drivers are making less than minimum wage. This is admittedly more difficult to calculate in an unbiased manner due to a lack of consensus as to whether gas, insurance, vehicle maintenance, etc. should be counted towards a driver's costs of operation.
My intuition says that it shouldn't matter. If a driver is willing to work for a very small margin of profit or even at a financial loss, it's their fault for taking a job that doesn't provide. If Uber doesn't pay, then don't work for Uber, it's as simple as that! Let the market decide; if people were to refuse working for pennies, then Uber would be forced to offer decent income or go out of business due to lack of drivers. And yet after having this initial opinion, the thought occurs... what if this was the norm for employment? Clearly we cannot operate as a society if every job paid like that. At some point, does regulation need to kick in to prevent such abuses from being the norm?
I don't know. It just makes no sense to me that anyone would be an Uber driver if it doesn't pay whatsoever. I can't decide who's more at fault - Uber, or the people offering themselves up as bait to a broken system.
Why is there a "lack of consensus as to whether gas, insurance, vehicle maintenance, etc. should be counted towards a driver's costs of operation"? The driver pays for these things, so they should count towards the driver's cost of operation. Seems clear to me.
Also, it seems you are happy for Uber to effectively pay below minimum wage. Does that mean you want to see minimum wage abolished?
I know, my position isn't quite decided. I just think there's a certain onus on the people who choose to be drivers, who accept the way things are. Why the hell are they agreeing to work for Uber if they're not making any money? Go find a job that pays then. By taking up a job with Uber and dealing with their bull, they're directly supporting and sustaining that system.
I can understand why it would be terrible if every business tried to pull this shit. Nobody gets paid to work? How would society function? But if you work for an outlying company like Uber where there is no money, that is your problem. Go find a paying job. It's not like Uber has a monopoly on the job market and everyone is required to work for them, for nothing. It's a choice. So don't choose to work for nothing? All I'm hearing is "I signed up to be a driver for Uber. I know they pay nothing, but I intentionally choose to work here, knowing it pays nothing!".
If this were a real problem, Uber would not have any drivers, and they would be out of business. If it were an even more serious problem, we'd have tons of companies paying nothing, and our first world economies would collapse overnight.
You could say the same about gambling, loan sharks, and minimum wage laws in general. We have these laws to protect people from themselves. We aren't all rational decision makers, especially not those of us who are desperate.
What would be the downsides of forcing companies that are engaging people in tasks that require operating a vehicle to offer reimbursement for that operation?
A big upside is that it simplifies evaluating the position for the person doing the work.
A downside is that the company would have to monitor for fraud (but this is pretty easy for Uber which is premised on tracking the distance the vehicle travels).
In my (possibly incorrect) understanding, the promise of uber to shareholders is the network effect. However, you're right. This elasticity only goes so far. If Uber is smart, they should work hard to keep prices (and profits) low as long as they can afford to do so.
McDonald's hasn't, quoting the OP you responded to, 'cut off all competition'. Are you imagining that with no competition, McDonald's would still not raise prices?
People could still cook at home or go to restaurants, so I think McDonalds with no competition wouldn't. Why would they risk losing their monopoly if they had one in fast food.
Uber doesn't care what it drivers earn, why would it hurt sales by giving them more money?
Uber has broken a monopoly, yet people are prattling on that they might create one?
Has a company ever done this, one real world example?
Why get a monopoly by out pricing the competition then raise prices to allow someone to do it back to you?
The idea that Uber can cut off all competition is suspect. They had to spend a lot of money because they were fighting the taxi monopoly and introducing a new type of product. But nowadays, all you need to compete is an app. The threat of competition is always there, as there's very little lock-in for both users and drivers.
Agreed. I wasn't aware of of such a variety of ocean flora was untapped, although I am not surprised. There are over 2,000 edible land plants but only a few dozen under active cultivation.
Every two or three months we see this same headline based on the same studies or have new numbers. We all know that other methods had very low success rate yet we never see a healine about Nicorette or patches.
A large number of "vapers" have reduce or even stopped smoking, including myself.
That being said, coal has to go anyway. I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.