Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Uber: self-driving cars & market economy

Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh: REVIEW, PHOTOS - Business Insider
"Thanks to Uber, it's finally possible to experience riding in a self-driving car. Starting Wednesday, the ride-hailing service is allowing select users to hail its self-driving cars in Pittsburgh."

How does Uber's driverless car work: GRAPHIC - Business Insider

How Uber's self-driving car works

Why Uber Is an Economist’s Dream - Freakonomics Freakonomics

"LEVITT: Uber is, in many ways, the embodiment of what the economists would like the economy to look like, because Uber is a market in some sense that the prices you pay respond to supply and demand. When there are lots of people looking for rides and not enough drivers, they raise the price, and when there are too many drivers and not enough people, they keep the price low. So that is how economists like markets to work.

...in 2015, if you extrapolate to the whole U.S., we found that the overall consumer surplus added up to almost $7 billion. So people spent about $4 billion on Ubers, but they actually would have been willing to spend about $11 billion. So for every dollar people spent on Uber, they got about $1.50 worth of extra joy that they would have been willing to pay on average above and beyond what they did pay.
...
Uber lost more than $1.2 billion over the first half of this year. Most of that came from subsidies the company pays its drivers. How long can something like that go on? Well, as we said earlier, with a valuation north of $60 billion, probably quite a while – but not forever."


The Uncomfortable Truth About Autonomous Cars | Daniel Burrus | Pulse | LinkedIn