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Part of the problem is not the technical know how but hackers with evil intent.
I was off by 10 years imoIt's not a matter of IF but just a matter of time when cars will drive circles around us old geezers. Probably 5-10 years.
Can't wait to see robocars competing and winning every single circuit race vs slow stupid humans
Part of the problem is not the technical know how but hackers with evil intent.
Not yet
Self driving cars still crash at double the rate of regular cars.
Technology is not there yet. We are 90% there but that last 10% is a doozie
The point is that there was nothing the driver's had that could or was transferred to shareholders.
sure there was, Uber cut their per ride share -- their pay
I usually tip Uber drivers pretty well but in cash.
Hubert Horan is still on the Uber beat
Aside to vy65, Uber's putative breakthrough to profitability was largely based on reducing the drivers' take. Sharp accounting described in the article counts for a lot of that too.
Uber now charges as much as or more than the traditional taxi services it disrupted
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025...provement.htmlLooking at the bigger picture, the real driver of Uber’s profit turnaround is that it has achieved large and sustainable levels of anti-compe ive market power.
Uber is totally immune from any threat of discipline from either marketplace compe ion or laws or regulations established by democratically elected governments designed to protect general public interests or the specific interests of consumers or workers. With that unconstrained market power, Uber has been able to raise fares with impunity and impose algorithmic pricing systems because passengers will never see compe ive offerings and will have no legal/regulatory protections against discriminatory or deceptive pricing practices.
Uber has thus been able to transfer billions from drivers into its own pockets, since no compe or will offer better terms, and Uber can overwhelm any judicial or legislative efforts to enforce minimum standards. Without that unconstrained market power, Uber would still be losing billions every year, and would have no plausible path to breakeven.
Three major factors, working in combination, created and will continue to sustain this anti-compe ive market power. The first was that Uber demonstrated a willingness to employ predatory pricing to a level that would have made Rockefeller and Carnegie blush. The investors who controlled Uber were always totally focused on achieving quasi-monopoly power because this was the only way they could ever achieve returns on the $13 billion they had invested. Even when Uber was losing $6 billion a year and enduring scandals and bad publicity it was universally understood that Uber would use its massive cash position to crush any potential compe ive challenge. This barrier to entry became even more impregnable once Uber achieved positive cash flow.
The second factor was Uber’s willingness to employ scorched earth techniques to crush any attempt to place any external constraints on its market power. Uber effectively achieved total deregulation of urban car services totally outside the democratic processes that established public oversight.
To cite one of many examples, when the California Supreme Court established rules for determining when outside contractors were truly independent and thus were not en led to employee labor law protections, and the California legislature codified these rules into law, Uber led a $200 million effort known as Proposition 22 to overturn them. Uber outspent supporters of the independent contractor legislation by a 10:1 margin and falsely claimed that a big majority of Uber drivers opposed the rules. But by crushing the California judiciary and legislature Uber achieved the power that made the $6 billion in annual labor to capital wealth transfers that drove its path to breakeven possible. [4] The stock market, which fully understood the importance of using market power to suppress driver compensation to the lowest level possible, immediately raised the market capitalization of Uber by $36 billion (over 60%) even though passenger payments were still covering less than 70% of Uber’s actual costs.
The third factor was Uber’s extraordinary narrative development/promulgation skills, which hugely contributed to the first two factors. Unlike most “tech” startups at that time, Uber made spending on PR and lobby a top corporate priority from day one. Its original messaging, copied directly from longstanding libertarian efforts, blamed all of the problems of traditional taxis on corrupt regulators. Since anyone concerned about consumers, workers or the efficient operation of urban transport infrastructure was corrupt and evil, the capital ac ulators how had invested in Uber should be given the “freedom” to do whatever they thought might maximize their investment returns.
This narrative positioned Uber as a heroic disruptor, whose innovative technology could solve all of the problems that had plagued urban car services for a hundred years. Even though urban transport had never attracted the interest of capital markets, Uber claimed it would soon achieve Amazon-like meteoric demand and valuation growth. None of these claims about industry problems and solutions were backed with any supporting evidence and Uber’s PR narratives remained powerful even after it ac ulated $33 billion in losses, and even after its post-pandemic fares have proven to be much higher than the traditional taxis they “disrupted” had charged. [5]
Lol this flex
Rented a jaguar waymo last time I was in LA. Drop offs and pickups are kind of weird. They can't just stop out front and let you out. They have to find a "legal" place to park so in a congested city like LA they might drop you three blocks from your destination.
what ever happened to that guy? did you know DMC in meatspace?
Lol no. No idea
Self-driving car company Waymo recently released data covering nearly 100 million driverless miles in four American cities through June 2025, the biggest trove of information released so far about safety. I spent weeks analyzing the data. The results were impressive. When compared to human drivers on the same roads, Waymo’s self-driving cars were involved in 91 percent fewer serious-injury-or-worse crashes and 80 percent fewer crashes causing any injury. It showed a 96 percent lower rate of injury-causing crashes at intersections, which are some of the deadliest I encounter in the trauma bay.https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/opinion/self-driving-cars.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k8.uKZf.kscSlaO 7lkVz&smid=nytcore-ios-shareIf Waymo’s results are indicative of the broader future of autonomous vehicles, we may be on the path to eliminating traffic deaths as a leading cause of mortality in the United States. While many see this as a tech story, I view it as a public health breakthrough.
The reasons autonomous vehicles are safer are straightforward. A system that follows rules, avoids distraction, sees in all directions and prevents high-speed conflicts will avert deadly collisions much more often.
There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes and natural disasters combined. Crashes are the No. 2 cause of death for children and young adults. But death is only part of the story. These crashes are also the leading cause of spinal cord injury. We surgeons see the aftermath of the 10,000 crash victims that come to emergency rooms every day. The combined economic and quality-of-life toll exceeds $1 trillion annually, more than the entire U.S. military or Medicare budget.
Waymo operates cars with no human driver. Their vehicles use cameras, radar and specialized sensors, known as LiDAR, that create detailed 3-D maps. They operate only in cities where they’ve studied every intersection.
Waymo is doing things right but still hiding their true costs.
I don’t know why Elon is determined to fail but I'm here for it.
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