The time may have finally arrived to put app-based transportation options out of commission. The latest report of 3,000 rapes and sexual assaults committed on or by Uber drivers in 2018 highlights a serious and possibly growing shortcoming of gig-type ride-hailing and delivery services: the weakness of driver background checks… Read More
As Uber’s initial public offering arrives this is a good moment to consider what kind of employment model for the future we all, as employees and employers, would prefer to adopt: Amazon or Uber?
One of my sons has interviewed with Amazon. The other has his Amazon moment today. My across-the-street neighbor works for Amazon Web Services.… Read More
Lyft’s initial public offering was expected to be the biggest tech offering in two years. A public offering is very much like an elevator and everyone getting on the elevator wants to go up. It’s worth noting as the doors open on the Lyft IPO elevator, General Motors is likely to be getting off – and they are not alone.… Read More
It wasn’t enough that Lyft and Uber introduced the world to the concept of taxi and limousine drivers committing suicide, we now have Lyft and Uber drivers committing suicide. In other words, it’s not enough that the business models of these companies are suicidal, they are actually visiting suicide upon their non-employees.… Read More
The good news is that Lyft’s initial public offering is over-subscribed, according to published reports. That also happens to be the bad news.
Like its disruptive corporate kin – Waymo, Uber, and Tesla Motors – Lyft is out to creatively destroy the automotive industry. In the process, the company is set on a course for its own annihilation… Read More
Industry analysts are fond of painting terrifying pictures of catastrophic market changes resulting from disruptive technologies or business models. Nowhere is this more evident, of late, than in the automotive industry where everything from artificial intelligence to automated driving is expected to upend current thinking… Read More
The latest reliability report from Consumer Reports which dumped on domestics and rained glory upon Asian imports highlighted a conundrum facing car makers. The more effort car makers put into innovation, the greater the risk of consumer confusion, system failure and lousy reliability scores.
The picture is even worse if one… Read More
It must be a measure of the dim view taken of the automotive industry by Silicon Valley types that of the 294 slides in Mary Meeker’s annual Trends presentation delivered at this year’s Code Conference less than 10 of those slides refer to transportation. The Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner even managed to avoid… Read More
In “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” circa 1971, Gene Wilder plays a vaguely misanthropic Willy Wonka who leads the young winners of his golden wrapper contest on a tour of the seven deadly sins within his candy factory and labs. (Who can forget Augustus Gloop?) At one point, Mike Teavee, a television-obsessed… Read More
This morning at Nvidia’s AI and Deep Learning Conference, GTC 2018, CEO Jen-Hsun Huang will give a keynote in which he will tout the company’s extraordinary progress in fostering and advancing the cause of artificial intelligence and deep learning along with the correlated autonomous driving industry. Hundreds… Read More
