...now that's what I call a pivot.
- "During rush hour, it is very inefficient for a one-tonne hulk of metal to take one person 10 blocks," he told the Financial Times in an interview. "We're able to shape behaviour in a way that's a win for the user. It's a win for the city. Short-term financially, maybe it's not a win for us, but strategically long term we think that is exactly where we want to head."
Eyes on the prize here: Uber has Jump in eight cities. And they're for profit. And they want to compete against this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bicycle-sharing_systems
People are generally too lazy and too desiring of comfort for this to work on anything beyond a niche scale.
Not really UBER is desperately expanding revenue at any cost, paying $1 for .25C of revenue seems withing their normal operation. There are a lot of infrastructure related problems for bikes as well. Most cities arent designed for them and keeping a bike safe outside is next to impossible. The car-to-go business model wouldn't really work either if a large percentage of cars ended up with slashed tires, cut breaks and submerged in the lake. And they're for profit.
- citation need.
To clarify: Uber has investors that are involved primarily for profit. That Uber is piss-poor at making a profit doesn't seem to have dissuaded them; Toyota just threw a half billion dollars at them despite the fact that their self-driving technology has difficulty discriminating between blown plastic bags and pedestrians. The bike thing is definitely a problem. Bikeshares seem to end up thrown into lakes a lot.- citation need.