Given Uber is one of the few companies who are lucky enough to have a separate page for all the controversies on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Uber), they also have their own fair of experience with police raids on their offices. They've also used "‘kill switch’ during raids to stop police seeing data" (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-files-leak...) before, so I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of legal "kill switch" or whatever that got triggered, so they can get rid of everything faster.

It was planned. What's Nigeria and Uganda gonna do?

This is hilarious. They are legally kidnappers at this point. No reason to even stop the ride and let you get out for free.

I would pay extra because I don't want the cognitive load of haggling on the cost. When I want/need A ride, it's because I'm either overloaded, away from home, or drunk. These are three times that I didn't want to bother with any more nonsense.

One anecdote for a datapoint: Not sure if it's better now but I've lost a phone in an InDrive and I've lost an expensive bag in an Uber and it was significantly easier and less sketchy to get the bag back. I'm not a price sensitive rider so the insurance of a reputable 'comfort' tier Uber driver paid off. The InDrive driver made me get another ride to him then demanded $1000mxn (~$55usd) to return my phone. The Uber app had me pay ~$250mxn if I remember correctly and the driver promptly returned the bag.

People like the knowledge that they are not being ripped off by the person they are interacting with. On Uber you are essentially guaranteed that you are paying the absolute max that you would accept algorithmically, and the driver is getting the absolute least they would accept to drive for. If the balance shifts in any way, someone is ripping off the person they will interact with.

Since the customer knows less about how much things should cost, they are more likely to be ripped off. People pay a 30% premium to ensure that they dont feel ripped off alone.

Can't speak for InDrive's safety rating, but I would pay 30-50% more for Uber's safety tech (on a $5 ride) than a company with less funding.

(I'm ex-Grab).

Insurance goes up. Who knows how much liability they need to cover transportation. They likely deal with claims of being kidnapped or held hostage by driver on a regular basis.

Man in some of the shitty countries I've had the misfortune of living in, taxi drivers were outright predatory and sometimes downright hostile. Uber was a godsend in such environments.

30% is fair. Don’t like it start a cab company

I read that in Nigeria (may misremember), the fares set by uber were too low (possibly it was a long-tail country with some incorrect exchange rates), so the drivers and riders had a custom of agreeing to different fees, I believe it came to the point where drivers would share an image or a copypasta with the actual rates and would ask the passenger to accept before picking them up.

Lovely. That's tech creating good jobs. I hope Uber leave my country too.

at $156B market cap someone sure is making money.

I've no say in the manner in which they ran/run their business but judging a mega-corporation on lemonade-stand level accounting is a fool's errand.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uCMu9MoRwCo

This reminds me of this bit on a podcast where a tidbit of learned information so blatantly contradicts basic logic.

There's always an explanation, in this case, the tidbit was that "dull knives are more dangerous", because you apply more force when cutting vegetables and can end up hurting yourself, but it's laughably wrong when applied to weapons.

In the case of the tidbit of "uber actually loses money" that might have been relevant in the first years, there's this phenomenon where companies operate at a loss for some time (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_dumping) in order to accumulate market share (i.e a monopoly) and then they increase prices in order to recoup their investment and make profits.

So you read somewhere that "uber actually loses money" and this was from presumably a trusted source, but you failed to account the date of the knowledge, when Uber was somewhat smaller and their margins were smaller, and you read it assuming it applies to the present, so you somehow thought that one of the biggest tech companies in the world, that charges around 30% per trip, and has almost no marginal costs, would operate at a loss.

So I don't want to be offensive, but it's so wrong that it has a comedic quality.

In developing countries, the taxi market is largely unregulated and Uber faces actual competition. Uber cannot compete on price in these regions.

Read the article to find out.

In Nigeria: Lithium totally irrelevant compared to oil. I think people have this really weird idea that lithium is to electric cars as oil is to regular cars, but it’s literally like a factor of 50 less.

Followup:

The PMCs that Erik Prince has are primarily doing oilfield and oil worker protection in places like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Same for mining facilities.

https://www.upstreamonline.com/exclusive/blackwater-founder-...

https://www.theafricareport.com/381915/erik-prince-returns-t...

> US DoW

To be clear, it is the DoD - Department of Defense

For lithium, isn’t South America and other parts of the world a better deal due to having the largest reserves and being more politically stable?

Seems more likely to be due to Uber failing to really penetrate the market. There are a number of markets where they’re really a distant second to Bolt or a local thing or both, and at some point they presumably have to start rationalising.