Why does it seem so many automotive journalists are anti-Uber?

Critical thinking skills aren't the best? Talking about you, not them

Uber is a direct existential threat to them.

More Uber use = fewer cars = less need for automotive mags to "objectively review" the cars the car companies want to sell you = less need for "reputable automotive journalists"

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Because the rise of Uber is contributing to the downfall of car ownership.

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Then I assume someone has crunched the numbers? How can uber be cheaper than my own car? I guess it can vary widely by city. If I lived in NY and had to pay a second rent to park? Maybe.

Guess it’s just my Houston suburb living arse can’t wrap my head around using it for everything. And waiting for them.

Okay but I don’t remember them ever attacking taxis, which is a similar business.

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Why bother when you can take a $10 Uber ride and just get dropped off and picked up at your destination without finding parking

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I find myself ubering every time I go out in Houston just because parking seems to be a real pain, so that means you pretty much break even, plus don't have to worry about drinking/driving.

Younger millennials and the generation behind them don't care nearly as much about car ownership. About 40% don't have a license at 19!

Uber/Lyft is a big reason.

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Yeah, for the many millions of people in the US who live and work in dense cities, and take public transportation to work, they may decide they don't need a car for the 2 times a week they drive somewhere. Why bother when you can take a $10 Uber ride and just get dropped off and picked up at your destination without finding parking? Or rent a car for $100 if you want to take a vacation out of town.

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Not even dense cities. Think about a small town that has 1000 cars total. The vast majority of those cars just sit around all the time and are never used. Uber's model will allow that town to operate on a few hundred vehicles once autonomous cars arrive. The cars would just kinda spread themselves around the city and park. Uber would determine how many cars are in a given area with algorithms that detect usage patterns and are able to shift resources on the fly as usage dictates. Uber needs one garage and some mechanics to maintain their fleet, but otherwise, the fleet just disperses itself around the town. You need to go the grocery store, you just tell Uber what kind of vehicle you need and the closest one drives up in a minute or two. Breakdowns? No problem. Sit tight and a new car will pull up and you leave the broken one where it is and go about your day.

The beauty is that your city is NOT in isolation, though, so breakdowns or increased demand causing shortages is handled. Right now, Uber does this through surge pricing to get more drivers to get on the roads with their cars in an area, but the same algorithms could signal where to send more autonomous cars just as easily. If Uber's networks detect that demand in Baton Rouge is rising (Saturday in the fall, perhaps), it can move resources from ANYWHERE in response to that demand in real time. Pull a car from New Roads, pull one from Prarieville. Pull a couple from New Orleans. The cars would be self-driving and free-roaming, so they could respond automatically to demand and, even better, use predictive algorithms to move resources into place as demand is rising, not just responding to demand. Why wait to move cars into BR when demand suddenly spikes on a Saturday in the fall if you know which Saturdays you can expect to see a spike and can move resources ahead of that spike? You can't think of it in terms of how many cars your little town or part of your city would need. Your little town would just be part of the larger heat map of usage in the country and the network would be fluidly responding to demand and moving cars around.

Of course, this is not going to happen tomorrow or next year, but it's a pretty strong possibility for how Uber paired with self-driving cars can fundamentally change things.

Like I said, Uber paired with self-driving cars has the potential to be a complete game-changer when it comes to how we get around.

Disruption in the industry

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The vast majority of those cars just sit around all the time and are never used. Uber's model will allow that town to operate on a few hundred vehicles once autonomous cars arrive. The cars would just kinda spread themselves around the city and park.

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You hear this all the time from the autonomous driving blowhards. Something about cars being parked 90% of the day. Im all for cars that will do all the work for me but the problem is with the assumption that more autonomy means drastically less cars. Cars may be parked 90% of the time but in a couple hours in the morning and again in the afternoon, 90% of cars are on the road as people go to and from work, drop off and pick up kids, etc. having 100 autonomous cars instead of 1000 personal vehicles can’t solve that problem...unless you are going to force certain companies/schools/medical offices/etc to adjust their hours of operation.