From ridesharing apps to a transportation fleet
We didn’t know that we needed ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft until they arrived. And they quickly found a following among people who needed a ride from the train station, a bar, work — or anywhere.
But riders dropped the apps when the coronavirus pandemic hit, uncertain of who might have been in the car before them.
To look at the impact on the gig economy, Greenwich Time spoke to David Noble, a University of Connecticut professor in management and head of the Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.
Q: What kind of impact will the pandemic have on Uber and Lyft?
A: Ridesharing business models will have a very difficult time during the next 12 to18 years. The future of such companies are based upon growing population density in fewer and fewer metro areas. So if people do not want to live in dense urban areas or people are still afraid of the virus, they will use Uber-like companies less.
If you look at the market share of ecommerce and what that did to department stores ... you can quickly conclude that if 10 percent of the most profitable customers leave Uber, you would kill the whole company.
Q: Is it possible to tell what ridesharing might look like five years from now?
A: Five years is somehow much harder than 20 years. At some point, you won't own a whole car unless you are just silly rich. You will own part of a fleet. Transportation will be point-to-point on demand and autonomous.
Q: Since 9/11, it’s accepted that we take off our shoes and go through security before getting on a plane. Do you see a similar future for ride sharing? Plastic covers for seats? Certifications of cleanliness?
A: Absolutely. Remember, you used to be able to smoke on planes. What if you did that now? Or during class at UConn? The idea of not smoking in those situations was once absurd.
Humans reject or comply very quickly with new paradigms. They may complain for a bit, but would you ever think Tinder would be such a runaway success that people would essentially conduct every part of the "wooing" process without meeting face to face?