Uber looks rather negative because driver reclassification, consumer cutbacks and easy switching threaten its business. Making drivers employees could raise costs and push ride prices up around 40%. Food delivery and comfort rides are cut when budgets tighten; riders switch to Lyft or Bolt for a few euros. Tesla or Waymo could bypass Uber with their own apps, and Google can scale quickly. Despite being a great company, Uber has too many unknowns; it is preferable to stay on the sidelines. x.com 

Tesla and Alphabet do not need to destroy Uber to hurt its shareholders; they only need to change the industry's economics. If autonomous vehicles lower cost per mile, pricing pressure follows, so Uber could post record ride volume and still earn less per ride. Uber's fight with Lyft already brought lower prices, incentives and margin pressure; two well-funded rivals with a far lower cost base will fight for the densest, most profitable markets, so assuming Uber's economics hold is aggressive. … Show more

Uber's trips could keep growing even without a Waymo partnership because the ride-hail market may expand faster than Waymo takes share. Based on estimated inputs and Waymo's reported fleet plans, every modeled scenario has Uber trips growing, though its US trip share falls from about 73% to 69% by Q4 2028 in the target case. The model excludes take rate, pricing and Uber's AV capex. x.com 

Uber and Lyft are finished because Tesla's Cybercab is priced 40-50% below Waymo, Uber and Lyft. It also offers a better customer experience with higher margins. x.com 

Uber cannot be owned until its robotaxi strategy and economics are clearer, including whether it stays asset-light or pivots to asset-heavy. Calling it 10 times 2027 free cash flow may be unfair if an asset-heavy pivot sends that cash into capex. Google puts global ridesharing at $150-180 billion in gross bookings a year, reaching $200 billion by decade's end, likely not big enough for Waymo, Tesla and Uber to all win while each spends tens of billions on fleets. x.com  x.com  x.com 

Uber and Lyft should gain from autonomy, because self-driving developers cannot afford to own the cars, leaving financed local fleets competing for demand the platforms hold. Replacing 10% of US driving takes 2-3 million robotaxis worth $150-300 billion. Robotaxi miles at $0.40-0.60 would undercut car ownership, growing ride-hail roughly 10x. Yet Uber trades near 14x trailing free cash flow and Lyft at single digits. Risks include first-party AV apps, maps or AI agents and safety shocks. x.com 

Uber has big long-term secular problems, enough to make even CEO Dara Khosrowshahi's $10M token insider buy a moment to consider shorting, though actually shorting is not recommended. Beyond the Waymo and robotaxi threat, an AI agent that constantly checks every app for the best price would hurt Uber, consistently the highest-priced ride service. Uber would need to lower prices, and it lacks the tech stack. x.com  x.com 

Cheap AI-generated code lets new entrants like Empower upend Uber's and Lyft's commission-based rideshare model. Empower is exploding in New York City by charging drivers a monthly software subscription, roughly $40 to $350, while they keep 100% of the fare and set their own rates, so drivers can earn more and riders may pay less. The same disruption will happen in many other industries. x.com 

Robotaxis could widen Uber's moat rather than destroy it, because its real advantage is the network matching huge pools of demand with whatever supply is available, not drivers' lack of negotiating power. Robotaxis change the supply but don't eliminate the network. The question is whether Uber becomes the toll road for autonomous mobility, letting Waymo and dozens of competing AV suppliers fight over the economics while Uber owns the customer, demand and dispatch layer. x.com 

Uber's distribution moat is taking a direct hit as Waymo plans to drop Uber and go direct in Austin and Atlanta by 2028, showing AVs do not need middleman apps. Tensions over safety, vehicle cleaning and regulatory lobbying have reached a breaking point. Separately, Uber's investment in Lucid is now worth zero as Lucid heads for bankruptcy after the Saudis stopped funding it. x.com