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Gibbon posted:Extremely expensive I thought. I caught taxis on single-digit occasions as an Australian, would be interested to hear what the issues were pre-rideshare apps.
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Nov 17, 2021 02:57
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VikingofRock posted:This is super interesting — how did you test this? I've seen demos where people microwave a plate of marshmellows for a few seconds to show the geometry of the standing wave.
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Nov 17, 2021 03:31
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I caught taxis on single-digit occasions as an Australian, would be interested to hear what the issues were pre-rideshare apps. Same issues that are in other cities really, like
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Nov 17, 2021 04:15
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I caught taxis on single-digit occasions as an Australian, would be interested to hear what the issues were pre-rideshare apps. I spent my pisshead 18-30 years pre-uber soooooo - cabbies locking the doors and asking you where you're going before they let you in the cab - cabbies taking weird routes to milk fare - poor street knowledge and directional skills meaning you get lost or dropped off somewhere you dont want to be (pre GPS) - generally bad driving (although this is ubers problem too) - cabbies general hygiene - sexual assault issues for my female friends (still exists in uber tho) - 'eftpos/card reader isnt working, cash only' - not taking you if its too close to the shift change over time (2 or 3AM saturday/sunday mornings for example - booking cabs for specific times eg. going to the airport and just not having it turn up? - booking cabs without a specific time and not having it turn up - just trying to book a loving cab - quoting prices you agree to before the trip only to find out they duped you like their whole model is 'you pay us money and we take you where you want to go' and somehow that managed to not deliver on that most of the time. Uber brought in the wild concept of 'enter your current location here, your destination here, and you will get picked up and dropped off and you can see where the car is and when it will get there!' They had a solid 8 years to get an app like ubers up and running, before even Uber existed, and the absolute best they came up with in that time was an app that listed a directory of the regional cab company phone lines you could then tap to dial from your smart phone. Uber dragged taxis into the 20th century and they deserve every loving bit of lost income for it. I dont necessarily agree with it ethically, but my dad is happy as a semi retired tradie doing uber for a bit of income and the numbers work for him in a very specific way (tax write offs against his super or something) and I only use uber if its raining since moving closer to all my friends and family, if Im not driving myself where I need to go or riding a bike. Laserface fucked around with this message at 04:36 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 04:25
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This is pure fantasy. Taxis certainly did have everything Uber does but the difference between the two is Uber unloads all the vehicle costs of handling and maintaining a fleet to its drivers. Of course it's 'better' for you consumers, you're basically getting free labor! Uber didn't even turn a profit until last month!
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Nov 17, 2021 05:07
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i gave up on traditional taxi services by being stuck at a bar at closing and the taxis which promised would come to get me, never did, forcing me to walk home uber is terribly exploitative but traditional taxis have their problems as well. the one nice thing about uber is that you are much more likely for the ride you hailed to actually appear, and even with a timer as well (a big innovation, because people HATE waiting for buses, trains, or taxis to arrive)
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Nov 17, 2021 05:50
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PT6A posted:I think that, relative to the Tech Nightmares thread in general, it's really popular to poo poo on Tesla and often Apple, but for every dumb and bad thing they do, they managed to each understand a thing that apparently eluded their competitors for years: making something look and feel and seem desirable is actually quite important if you want people to buy it. And it wasn't just that traditional car manufacturers were accidentally making electric cars "weird" and underpowered/inconvenient. It was a conscious choice by the manufacturers to try and nuke electric vehicles, imho due to pressure from their sales networks the dealerships. Electric requires orders of magnitude less maintenance, which means less money for dealers who earn a decent chunk of their profits from the service centers. When I was last looking for a new car I decided to try looking at a chevy bolt, I called 3 dealerships and 2 tried to steer me towards an ICE and blew me off when I wasn't interested. The final one said they had one salesman who knew anything about it, pulled what seemed like the most low energy salesman I ever met in my life, refused to let me go on a test drive and basically did everything in their power to get me off the lot asap not caring about the sale. After dealing with every high pressure sales tactic every other time I've bought a car, this was the most bizarre experience I'd ever had car shopping.
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Nov 17, 2021 05:52
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There was an amusing episode of Amazing Race where they were in Perth (Australia), and the biggest drama that occurred is none of them could get a fukn Taxi. Everything listed above was terrible but also: Fights at taxi stands used to be really common in nightlife districts. A lot more people use to drink drive because of the difficulty and cost of getting a Taxi home at night.
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Nov 17, 2021 06:15
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Part of the reason why 'innovation' is the overused and abused word of tech bros is because there are legitimate cases where industries that were actively refusing to adapt got forced into it by competition actually making use of new technology and convenience to make the product available that people actually want but no one will sell to them.
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Nov 17, 2021 06:17
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HootTheOwl posted:This is pure fantasy. Taxis certainly did have everything Uber does but the difference between the two is Uber unloads all the vehicle costs of handling and maintaining a fleet to its drivers. E: I should note that unsurprisingly it’s largely the taxis that hang around the ranks at the train station and other places that Uber and regular taxis companies won’t collect from TACD fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 11:31
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VikingofRock posted:This is super interesting — how did you test this? I'm a hobby baker and have a few thermometers that are pretty sensitive. So it's pretty easy to microwave a glass of water and probe it at different depths.
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Nov 17, 2021 12:33
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PT6A posted:I think that, relative to the Tech Nightmares thread in general, it's really popular to poo poo on Tesla and often Apple, but for every dumb and bad thing they do, they managed to each understand a thing that apparently eluded their competitors for years: making something look and feel and seem desirable is actually quite important if you want people to buy it. Wasn't the electric car something that existed decades before Tesla but was actively killed by the rest of the industry because of it's perceived threat, rather than not being desired by the consumer? I'm pretty sure there was a documentary about that.
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Nov 17, 2021 13:31
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PT6A posted:I think that, relative to the Tech Nightmares thread in general, it's really popular to poo poo on Tesla and often Apple, but for every dumb and bad thing they do, they managed to each understand a thing that apparently eluded their competitors for years: making something look and feel and seem desirable is actually quite important if you want people to buy it. And some major car manufacturers also haven't learned this lesson, what with their electric cars looking like a Tesla crashed into a spaceship into a phone shop. Just make a VW Golf but it has a battery instead of a gas tank, with exactly the same buttons and indicators as the regular Golf.
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Nov 17, 2021 14:29
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Anubis posted:And it wasn't just that traditional car manufacturers were accidentally making electric cars "weird" and underpowered/inconvenient. It was a conscious choice by the manufacturers to try and nuke electric vehicles, imho due to pressure from their sales networks the dealerships. Electric requires orders of magnitude less maintenance, which means less money for dealers who earn a decent chunk of their profits from the service centers. When I was last looking for a new car I decided to try looking at a chevy bolt, I called 3 dealerships and 2 tried to steer me towards an ICE and blew me off when I wasn't interested. The final one said they had one salesman who knew anything about it, pulled what seemed like the most low energy salesman I ever met in my life, refused to let me go on a test drive and basically did everything in their power to get me off the lot asap not caring about the sale. After dealing with every high pressure sales tactic every other time I've bought a car, this was the most bizarre experience I'd ever had car shopping. Another reason why car dealerships suck. IMO you should just be able to order a car like you would a toaster with 14d right of return (maybe with handling fee) if it sucks.
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Nov 17, 2021 14:34
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Detective No. 27 posted:Wasn't the electric car something that existed decades before Tesla but was actively killed by the rest of the industry because of it's perceived threat, rather than not being desired by the consumer? I'm pretty sure there was a documentary about that. here's an excerpt from edward nidermeyer's book "ludicrous" quote:In fact, automakers like GM had built small-volume electric cars like the EV1 in order to comply with California’s Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) mandate and had lost huge amounts of money on each one they sold or (more typically) leased. The cost to develop a new car easily exceeds a billion dollars even when manufacturers don’t use an entirely new drivetrain technology, and the margins on new cars are small and under constant competitive pressure. Taking the electric car market seriously would require huge new development costs, a new supply chain, and a public charging network. Even if the resulting electric car were priced at cost or at a small loss, it would be thousands of dollars more expensive than an equivalent gas car and offer a far more limited range between charges. In the absence of hard evidence showing that they could sell enough electric cars to cover the massive fixed cost of developing them, the business model was a nonstarter. basically it was a huge upfront investment with uncertain immediate returns that previously had lost money and the industry wasn't willing to make the leap until tesla jumped in full force also (imo) america is paradoxically arguably the worst country to start making electric vehicles in because the country is so drat big and car centric that people regularly use their cars to drive enormous distances, compared to somewhere like japan or europe where its much more likely to have a car used only for fairly short distances
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Nov 17, 2021 15:57
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No one in Europe or Japan has a garage to charge in.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:07
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PT6A posted:I think that, relative to the Tech Nightmares thread in general, it's really popular to poo poo on Tesla and often Apple, but for every dumb and bad thing they do, they managed to each understand a thing that apparently eluded their competitors for years: making something look and feel and seem desirable is actually quite important if you want people to buy it. Everyone else in the EV business BEFORE Tesla tried to start at the economy end of the market and failed. Tesla started with an overpriced Roadster and sold them to the very segment that included the venture capital people, raised capital and then executed on the Model S good enough to win MT Car Of The Year. I don't own a Tesla, I drive a Kia EV, but I don't think the industry would be where it is without Tesla.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:26
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Detective No. 27 posted:Wasn't the electric car something that existed decades before Tesla but was actively killed by the rest of the industry because of it's perceived threat, rather than not being desired by the consumer? I'm pretty sure there was a documentary about that. electric cars have existed as long as ICE cars have, but battery technology hasn't provided a useful amount of range for the weight until only the last couple decades. electric cars had a brief period of usefulness because ICE cars in 1910 didn't go very far either, and both were hampered by bad roads and lack of refuling opportunities. as roads got better and there were more places to fill up on gas, ICE cars became the clear obvious choice for anyone who wanted to go long distances electric trains, on the other hand, have been in use since the creation of the reliable electric motor in the early 1880s, and range isn't really a problem when you can electrify the track Platystemon posted:No one in Europe or Japan has a garage to charge in. people often talk about "the car industry" when they should be talking about "the american car industry", japanese manufacturers were big on electric and hybrid cars before tesla came along even if detroit was dragging its feet Mr. Fall Down Terror fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 16:31
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Detective No. 27 posted:Wasn't the electric car something that existed decades before Tesla but was actively killed by the rest of the industry because of it's perceived threat, rather than not being desired by the consumer? I'm pretty sure there was a documentary about that. In the 1990's to be correct. I even got to drive the latter model of the GM EV1 (the one with NiMh batteries) and it was good. I biked with someone who had the early 2000's Toyota RAV4 electric (not the Tesla one, that came later) and it was excellent, 100 mile range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV Basically what happened is California forced companies to sell EV's, the companies did so reluctantly, GM hired a very good firm to design the EV1 ( AeroVironment), and when they managed to get the regs dropped they destroyed the cars in a temper-tantrum of sorts. People who had them literally begged GM to let them buy them.
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Nov 17, 2021 16:33
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HootTheOwl posted:Taxis certainly did have everything Uber does HootTheOwl posted:This is pure fantasy. I can believe there were some pockets of decent taxi companies somewhere, and probably Uber crushed a bunch of them via offloading their actual operating costs, but it wasn't true in any city I've ever visited. Booking a cab in advance to get a ride from the airport and it showing up half an hour late or not at all is as close to a universal travel experience as I've ever seen.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:22
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TACD posted:Lol this might be true where you live but in my city there’s a large proportion of taxis that are still cash-only We've had debit card readers in cabs since at least 2005 here. It owns. And you can't "hail a cab", they all have to be ordered via phone by calling the company, so you get reliable and fair service every time.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:26
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Pre-Uber, the standard approach in SF was for the cabbie to tell you only at the end of the ride that the card reader was broken.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:28
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withak posted:Pre-Uber, the standard approach in SF was for the cabbie to tell you only at the end of the ride that the card reader was broken. You do that in a university city, you learn pretty quickly you're not getting paid And since all ordering and dispatch is done via phone anyway, along with every taxi being numbered on the side, drivers would end up on a poo poo list pretty quick. Hell, before tyool Covid-19, you could still ride in the front seat, no cage or separators. Mister Facetious fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 18:34
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Platystemon posted:No one in Europe or Japan has a garage to charge in. You don't need a garage to charge a car in. Its very common to install chargers outside on houses for cars parked on driveways currently (and quite a few EU governments actually have grants that let you get them for free). That doesn't help people who live in apartments, but very large numbers of middle class 40+ year old Europeans (the demographic most likely to drop €30k+ on a brand new electric car anyway) have houses with driveways in many European countries.
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Nov 17, 2021 18:59
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Mister Facetious posted:We've had debit card readers in cabs since at least 2005 here. It owns. Street hails are good, though, unless you want to be stuck on hold for 20 minutes at a high-demand time, and then wait 45 minutes for a cab to actually be dispatched and arrive. Ultimately, for me, the story of Uber is that they fixed a lot of things that were broken with the taxi industry, and they broke a lot of things which oughtn't have been hosed with. Let that be a lesson to other industries: sit on your hands and piss your customers off, and some will Disrupt poo poo and no one will end up happy at the end of the day. I don't like Uber as a service for a lot of reasons already discussed at length, but they got market share primarily by being the most convenient and constantly available service. People also point out that they tended to be cheaper, but... eh, not really that much cheaper, and certainly not all the time. If the price structure of Uber and taxis were reversed, Uber would still be more popular, I think.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:14
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Mister Facetious posted:You do that in a university city, you learn pretty quickly you're not getting paid Yeah if you push back then the machine would often miraculously start working again.
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Nov 17, 2021 19:21
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Also, I've definitely had cases where the driver "misheard" the address and we ended up god-knows-where. The map is a great thing to protect both the driver and passenger (in my case, it was a flat fare because I was headed from the airport so the driver ate the cost; in the other, the driver was a dick and expected the full fare to the wrong location, and then back to the correct location, to be paid so my mom paid with credit card and then disputed the payment with the CC company).
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Nov 17, 2021 19:23
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PT6A posted:Street hails are good, though, unless you want to be stuck on hold for 20 minutes at a high-demand time, and then wait 45 minutes for a cab to actually be dispatched and arrive. I agree with all of this, for what it's worth. There's a lot of good things about both models, but a lot of bad things too. Standardizing payments, using GPS maps, and simplifying calling a cab were all advancements that the taxi industry desperately needed. Rating both drivers and customers, cutting margins to the bone, and de-professionalizing the fleet have been more problematic impacts. And some of the effects have simply been bad, like filling the streets with cab traffic, or creating an epidemic of scams and assaults due to all the non-liveried taxis. Traditional taxi companies are slowly adopting the ubiquitous app interface that is at the heart of Uber and Lyft, and perhaps they will be able to regain market share over time (particularly in cities that are willing to regulate the industry). But the best app right now is Curb, which ends up costing you more to use and is struggling to change some of the sacred cows of the traditional taxi industry (like metered payments, cash payments, or "entrepreneurial" drivers). And the people who want specific types of vehicles are often just out of luck. Ultimately the taxi companies will need to work together and give up some of their independence, or will continue getting pummeled by their more modern and centralized competitors. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Nov 17, 2021 |
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Nov 17, 2021 20:10
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It's worth noting that Uber is subject to a very different financial context from standard taxi companies: they can operate without regard for profit. Q3 2021 was Uber's first profitable quarter ever, after accumulating more than $22 billion in losses over the course of more than a decade. With investors keeping them afloat, Uber and Lyft are free to experiment without worrying too much about costs or revenue impact. That's how they've managed to implement innovative systems and unusual side projects while still maintaining price parity with standard taxis or even undercutting them. The taxi industry certainly has been stuck in its ways, but having to operate at a profit has also restricted its ability to change things compared to Uber. I'm bringing this up, because Uber is commonly cited as an success for innovation and deregulation, but to me it looks more like a sign that an organization has more freedom to focus on improving service and creating a more efficient system when it's subsidized and doesn't have to worry about being run for profit. Which sounds like a sign that we should be putting more money into publicly-run transit systems!
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Nov 17, 2021 22:00
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Unfortunately, in America, even the post office is expected to turn a profit. You'll never sell the voters, or the ghouls in office, on a tax subsidized unprofitable transit system.
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Nov 17, 2021 23:58
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road networks are an unprofitable, subsidized transit system. its not about tax expenditure, its about who the beneficiary is (me, car driver = good, you, train rider = leech)
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Nov 18, 2021 00:04
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Is there anywhere on the entire planet that has a public transport system so good they have no taxis? Hong kong is absolutely tiny, has an immaculate system of buses, trains, tramways, Funicular railways, moving sidewalks and anything else you could possibly imagine and wikipedia still says the taxi cab system services 1+ million riders a DAY. taxis seem like the fill a pretty different role than trains and buses.
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Nov 18, 2021 00:35
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Main Paineframe posted:It's worth noting that Uber is subject to a very different financial context from standard taxi companies: they can operate without regard for profit. Q3 2021 was Uber's first profitable quarter ever, after accumulating more than $22 billion in losses over the course of more than a decade. With investors keeping them afloat, Uber and Lyft are free to experiment without worrying too much about costs or revenue impact. Uber's success is innovation, not deregulation. They want to convince you that it's both at the same time, but it's all about the app, and there was never any real obstacle to taxi companies getting together and saying "hey, let's do this" other than the fact they thought they didn't need to. The de-regulation had utility inasmuch as it allowed a bunch of assholes to crack a restricted industry and prove that their way works better, but it's not a necessary condition to provide most of the benefits of apps like Uber or Lyft.
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Nov 18, 2021 00:54
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Laserface posted:I spent my pisshead 18-30 years pre-uber soooooo I caught a LOT of Sydney, AUS taxis, up to 300 / year from 2000-2015 - Not just 3am, Trying to get a cab from the suburbs to the city at 3pm was impossible because every cab driver handed over at the same time - Telling a driver that it was illegal to reject a fare, and pulling out a phone with the taxi complaint line number already entered in order to get a pickup They also would play games with the "totally secure meters" which were designed and produced by the largest cab company, not the government - Delaying pickups until after 10pm to get the additional 20% surcharge - I've gotten in a taxi at 2pm on a Sunday and was showing Tariff 2 (The 20% night surcharge), called the driver on it and he pushed some buttons and it went back to Tariff 1 [That just raises more questions!] - Drivers would wait until you looked away and then run up extras, e.g. the $3.50 booking fare, or just a few random dollars and when they pulled up they would quickly hit paid, clear, recall and it would just show a single charge with no extras - When the Uber surcharge came in, and it was part of the meter, drivers would then add it on at the end of every fare, and explain that the government told them to. What killed the Sydney Taxi industry was Taxi Plates were limited to around 10 new ones per year. The Macquarie Bank bought 800(??) taxi plates promising to create a disabled taxi service "Lime", the government did a sweetheart deal for $1000 each while the drivers on the road were paying around $70,000- $100,000. Then their cab company collapsed, they flooded the market with plates and crashed the market. Uber just got the blame.
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Nov 18, 2021 03:08
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evilbastard posted:I caught a LOT of Sydney, AUS taxis, up to 300 / year from 2000-2015 I mean for the most part now Uber is essentially just taxis but private cars (migrants working a lovely job pulling too many hours and mumbling to someone on their handsfree/headphones the entire journey) the pricing these days is about on par with what cabs charge. I remember my first uber ride home from a frequent location to my house was like 40% cheaper than a taxi ride but now there isnt much in it besides that uber is what you know has an app that shows you when and where you'll get picked up.
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Nov 18, 2021 05:35
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Platystemon posted:No one in Europe or Japan has a garage to charge in. The Model 3 is now the best selling car in Europe.
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Nov 18, 2021 06:01
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VideoGameVet posted:The Model 3 is now the best selling car in Europe. The Commodore 64 is the bestselling microcomputer of all time. e: That’s an unreasonably pithy reply. My original point was that there are pros and cons of marketing electric cars in every country. A single point like “this car is the best selling” is utterly useless. Post something like charts of the market share of all models of electric cars in the U.S. and Europe over time to show that the U.S. really is the worst place to start selling electric cars. Platystemon fucked around with this message at 06:20 on Nov 18, 2021 |
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Nov 18, 2021 06:13
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:road networks are an unprofitable, subsidized transit system. its not about tax expenditure, its about who the beneficiary is (me, car driver = good, you, train rider = leech) Road networks and road maintenance benefit existing structures of capital. Trains benefit the worker as it increases your purchasing power by lowering your need to buy gas insurance and a car or second car in a single family.
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Nov 18, 2021 06:23
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PT6A posted:Uber's success is innovation, not deregulation. They want to convince you that it's both at the same time, but it's all about the app, and there was never any real obstacle to taxi companies getting together and saying "hey, let's do this" other than the fact they thought they didn't need to. The key to Uber's success isn't the app, it's pretending that drivers are independent contractors and making them provide their own vehicles. The massive potential workforce this enables is crucial to their quality of service.
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Nov 18, 2021 08:04
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Mr. Fall Down Terror posted:i gave up on traditional taxi services by being stuck at a bar at closing and the taxis which promised would come to get me, never did, forcing me to walk home Yeah. The Goon Tendency five years ago to deny that taxis were terrible was at odds with my experiences with using taxis too. Called cabs never showing, 'my card reader is broken', 'I have no change', etc.
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Nov 18, 2021 12:09
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