It seems pretty clear that it's not a winner-take-all market. There's, what, 3+ competitors out now that are competing on price and service, and furthermore the drivers can switch between them more easily than any other prior form of employment. This means that they're facing strict price competition for both drivers and riders. The infrastructure required is all relatively basic software, so costs are relatively low. As you said, all the customer cares about is "as quickly and cheaply as possible" - all you need is new competitor that drops the cut for riders and drivers (+ advertising) and people will switch. This is exactly Fasten's strategy.
Without fundamental change to the landscape everyone's just going get their margins eaten in this environment. Uber knows this, so they're trying to own self-driving vehicle technology to give them an edge over their competitors. Then they're in competition with the other self-driving technology providers who might partner with Lyft etc., so that doesn't even put them fully in the clear even if they can pull it off.
Self-driving technology and how it plays out determines if these companies actually reach the high valuations, IMO.
Without fundamental change to the landscape everyone's just going get their margins eaten in this environment. Uber knows this, so they're trying to own self-driving vehicle technology to give them an edge over their competitors. Then they're in competition with the other self-driving technology providers who might partner with Lyft etc., so that doesn't even put them fully in the clear even if they can pull it off.
Self-driving technology and how it plays out determines if these companies actually reach the high valuations, IMO.