Completely agree re competitors. If you look at when Uber and Lyft left Austin, almost overnight, competitors willing to follow the local laws sprung up and soon began providing equivalent service. In my opinion, it's going to be impossible to establish a moat (aside from incumbency) in ridesharing (absent some kind of regulatory change heavily favoring incumbents). The second someone thinks they can do it better, they will try (provided the capital is available).
I was in Austin many times over the period that Uber and Lyft were not there.
One of my takeaways was that building a mobile app which feels polished and actually works as advertised is _hard_ - not one of the local competitors managed it. Most of them didn’t even bother to distribute their app outside the US App Stores (a common issue with American companies) making it next to impossible to use for international visitors.
Uber and Lyft are not immune to some of this though - Lyft still do not appear to accept international credit cards correctly, though fortunately they do accept Apple Pay which is a reasonable substitute. And Uber’s GPS navigation is unspeakably bad in most metros, offering idiotic routes.
> ...Uber’s GPS navigation is unspeakably bad in most metros, offering idiotic routes...
On this tangent: I took a few Lyfts around LA recently, with the driver following Lyft navigation. For the longer airport rides, that navigation was indeed "unspeakably bad", diverting onto surface roads that ended up adding 15 minutes to a 45-minute trip.
Not being in a hurry, I let it play out on two trips. I looked at traffic conditions on my own phone and there was no construction or accident that would cause the diversion.
Are Uber and Lyft using their own nav solution, or are they contracting it out?
I believe Uber used to use Google maps and switched away from it to something else.
Where I live now, it doesn’t understand that Uber cars are registered as minicabs and can therefore use a variety of roads closed to normal cars. Consequently what should be a 2-3 minute pickup is often quoted as 15 or more as it suggests the driver will be going around the entire city perimeter when they can actually go across. Fortunately the drivers (usually) know that and completely ignore the GPS!
I (mostly) disagree. I always prefer to take RideAustin now because they pay their drivers more and donate a large amount of money to local charities with their round up feature.
RideAustin was most definitely sub-par when it first came out, but considering it was rushed on a teeny shoe-string, non-profit budget, that's not surprising. I'm sure Uber and Lyft had lots of issues when they first launched, too.
Point being these days RideAustin is 100% adequate. It gets me from A to B at a fair price, quickly.
It’s only 100% adequate if you can download it and it takes the payment you have. During the entire period Uber was away, this was not the case for me, making it 100% useless instead.
During that period, I rented a car each time I flew in.
random data point from Berlin...multiple US friends cannot use JUMP bikes (owned by Uber) using their USA uber apps. Something just doesn't work. So I think this must be hard for companies to get right.
Probably hard. And the general rules about the effort to handle all the edge cases.
It's also reasonable, especially if you're prioritizing time to market and especially if you know you may have a small window, you may decide that a lot of the edge cases just aren't very important. How much does JUMP really care if US visitors to Berlin can use their bikes or not?
I suppose this is just one person's opinion, but I had the opposite experience. My first time in Austin, I landed at the airport, brought up Uber, and got the message that it was not allowed. But almost immediately upon exiting the plane, I saw someone had left behind cards for RideAustin and Fasten with promo codes for each. Downloaded the app from the QR codes, opened the app, and the rest of the UX felt familiar to me. Switching was seamless.
