LYFT is taking a beating just because of an UBER IPO. I would not be surprised if UBER tries to buy a stake in LYFT in the coming months
lol buy up your only competitor. i dont think that will fly.google actually owns a stake in both. about a bill in lyft and 5 bil in uber!
i agree that uber buying part of lyft would be silly as they are a direct competitor in many markets. what is the benefit of buying part of your only competitor when you are bigger, have more resources at your disposal and could just invest another $5-$20 billion in self-driving technology and win outright?
Ok, but they have invested in their overseas competitors although LYFT is much bigger. I think their last deal was a buy out of Careem for 3.1B last month (Middle East ride hailing company)
its only a monopoly if you buyout your competitor within your geography.
although maybe tehy could buy somewhat different competitors like byrd or something.
yeah weren’t the didi and careem buys basically them giving up competing in those areas and wanting exposure to or ownership of the leading operator? very different than buying part of a much smaller competitor.
I don’t think most people who drive today would ever give up the flexibility of owning your own vehicle, or the joy of driving (assuming traffic moves in your metro area). We’re still miles away from autonomous vehicles being mainstream and safe, and then being accepted/trusted by the public. So far away that the discounted PV of any profitability would be much less than what’s being priced in.
Uber’s valuation is even problematic than LYFT’s because analysts are also pricing in other products like Ubereats like they’ve invented fire. They have a huge customer base until the moment a better alternative comes along,
Uber’s IPO, in my opinion, will be like a lot of recent overhyped IPOs that went south (Fitbit, Snapchat, and now LYFT). I’ll probably have a small short position the moment Schwab will let me. That first ER when they announce how vague the path to profitability is will be a real wakeup call to these overpricing analysts.
I give the first autonomous ride shares about six months before they feel like inside of a subway and every service is sticky for questionable reasons.
Hmmm GM owns 7.8% stake in Lyft
I may take a flyer on Lyft as upside is humongerous
Also:
Lyft has been working with Aptiv – a self-driving offshoot of car-parts supplier Delphi – in Las Vegas since January 2018. As of August 2018, 5,000 paid rides were completed in Aptiv’s fleet of 20 self-driving cars (75 Aptiv automated cars operate in the city in all), serving around 20 popular locations on the Las Vegas Strip. The companies plan to expand the fleet and the number of destinations.
rideshare disrupts public transportation far before it disrupts consumer car ownership. i’m already seeing this first hand.
small cities/towns are now testing rideshare in place of public transport (large capex doesn’t make sense for small locales and reasonable ongoing expenses are much easier to swallow than massive capex that is likely unsustainable). large cities are now incorporating rideshare with public transport systems and will likely cut inefficient bus routes and substitute with rideshare. i can now get anywhere i want in my city for a fraction of the cost to drive and only slightly more time ($3.50 to travel 36km by public transport in ~70 minutes versus ~$10 to travel 36km by car in 40-50 minutes) by linking to efficient transport (i.e. LRT) using city-sponsored rideshare.
price of cabs keeping going up WTF
De Blasio wants to drive you into the (literally) sh*tty subway brah. It’s easier to tax alternatives than to actually improve the system.