Dara's answer to low driver's pay. A bunch of runaround if you ask me.

Did people see the interview with Harry and Dara?  Harry asked some questions on driver earning and basically, Dara's answers were

"If we raise rates, demand falls, so..mumble muble..."

"Instead, let's get more people to take Uber so you will have more rides."

Excerpt:

Harry: What do you think about driver earnings?  I think that’s probably the main thing I hear from drivers: they are not paid enough or they are quitting because they are not making enough money.  Is that something that’s on the roadmap?

Dara: I think it’s very important, especially in a growing economy and with gas prices going up.  And we have done some experimentation in some cities around raising the per mile and per minute rate, but any time you do this, you have to be careful because when you raise prices, demand can go down.

But what’s really important is that we balance all this because we don’t always control earnings.  So we have to proceed very carefully when we think about changing time and distance rates, since the more you increase prices, the less demand there will be and then that could cause issues.

But we can’t be religious about that, we have to test things out and see if there are alternative methods or ways to boost income like tipping, for example.

Harry: So what’s the best way to explain that to a driver like me then? Because over the past few years, I’ve seen rates on Uber come down and I’m making less on a trip from Santa Monica to L.A.X. than I used to.

Dara: Really, what we want is for drivers to have less dead time waiting for your next trip, then you can have a win-win or what we call…

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Did people see the interview with Harry and Dara?  Harry asked some questions on driver earning and basically, Dara's answers were

"If we raise rates, demand falls, so..mumble muble..."

"Instead, let's get more people to take Uber so you will have more rides."

Excerpt:

Harry: What do you think about driver earnings?  I think that’s probably the main thing I hear from drivers: they are not paid enough or they are quitting because they are not making enough money.  Is that something that’s on the roadmap?

Dara: I think it’s very important, especially in a growing economy and with gas prices going up.  And we have done some experimentation in some cities around raising the per mile and per minute rate, but any time you do this, you have to be careful because when you raise prices, demand can go down.

But what’s really important is that we balance all this because we don’t always control earnings.  So we have to proceed very carefully when we think about changing time and distance rates, since the more you increase prices, the less demand there will be and then that could cause issues.

But we can’t be religious about that, we have to test things out and see if there are alternative methods or ways to boost income like tipping, for example.

Harry: So what’s the best way to explain that to a driver like me then? Because over the past few years, I’ve seen rates on Uber come down and I’m making less on a trip from Santa Monica to L.A.X. than I used to.

Dara: Really, what we want is for drivers to have less dead time waiting for your next trip, then you can have a win-win or what we call, higher utilization. If we can increase your utilization, then drivers will earn more and we don’t have to increase rates on riders.

Again, we have to be careful because when you raise rates significantly, demand can go down significantly and utilization can go down. So you may be earning more per trip, but you will be actually earning less over a day because you have fewer trips out there.

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