Comment by tjpaudio

I'm not quite sure everyone discussing this, including the economist article author, is in the loop with why Lyft and Uber are getting valued the way they are. Wall Street is not paying for a taxi company, they are betting that Uber and Lyft are the best poised to first rollout driverless ride sharing, i.e. one of them will own and monopolize patentable tech that the mass public wants to use. The existing experience is a commodity business where profits go to zero, that's well known and old news.