> The only thing that can ''take out'' Uber is widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles
That's ridiculous. It's not even a little hard to imagine that they could be overtaken by a similar competitor such as Lyft given a plausible sequence of events. In fact it's basically a certainty that they would be if they ever abandoned competing based on price. Which defeats a hell of a lot of the point of paying to acquire a monopoly in the first place.
Agreed. They wouldn't even need to be overtaken. It seems that a lot of the valuation is based on the premise that this is a global winner takes all market. If it turns out that's not true and there is in fact space for multiple competitors then the valuation could turn out to be a lot less.
If Uber has a moat of any sort to protect itself from competition, I'm not seeing it.
Once Uber has executed a tactical blitzkreig in a new city and incited a pogrom against the cab drivers, and fought the legislative battles with resistant city councils; the door is open for any rideshare company to glide in on Uber's coatails and take advantage of all that costly trailblazing without paying a dime.
Cynically: that's why Uber doesn't want to win that kind of war.
They want to get in, and then work with the locals to establish some `sensible regulation'. Regulation that just happens to be cumbersome enough to deter new small-scale entrants.
This is not true in Austin. The city passed a fingerprint and registration requirement and uber and lyft both left the following weekend. Smaller competitors are growing fast. I miss the nice apps and cheap prices but the alternatives are ok.
I didn't mean to imply they had a Windows-like monopoly. I do think there are some real network efforts around driver and rider density (especially if pool takes off). I think they settle somewhere in the middle between monopoly and commodity, and the fact that the transportation market is so huge helps them carve out a nice valuation so long as they have only a handful of competitors. I spend around $100/week on Uber and I haven't switched to Lyft even though I heard it would be a bit cheaper. On the other hand if Tesla offered me 50% cheaper fares to ride in their autonomous vehicle fleet, even if it was just available in my city, I would do it in a heartbeat.
That's ridiculous. It's not even a little hard to imagine that they could be overtaken by a similar competitor such as Lyft given a plausible sequence of events. In fact it's basically a certainty that they would be if they ever abandoned competing based on price. Which defeats a hell of a lot of the point of paying to acquire a monopoly in the first place.