Gotta break some eggs to make an omelet!

The Jenkins piece is a cry to short Tesla. One good Saskatchewanian report or -- NED freakin' forfend -- the election of a Ted Cruz or Rand Paul and their value could plumment.

I know it's off topic, but I'm too cheap to pay for a subscription and read the whole thing to find out for myself. Does the column explain how, exactly, Uber is disruptive?

My understanding is that Uber just provides a minimal amount of screening of drivers and cars who can be hired directly by people in need of a ride. While conceptually it's a nice step away from the over-reaching regulatory state, functionally it looks to me like a modest compromise with the status quo ante cab system. The consumer can usually get a ride for a better price than by calling a cab, but in exchange puts his safety in the hands of someone whose only qualification was owning a relatively new car and being able to pass a test that every teenage boy in the country can pass.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think anybody should be stopping Uber from doing their thing, I think they should live or die on the strength of what the market thinks of them. I just doubt that they'll ever be anything close to disruptive of that market.

@AndyN: I can send the article if you'd like, but it's really about Tesla's market cap being overly contingent on Federal subsidies and regulations.

Uber is just thrown out as a comparison, but I'll play.

Uber is not disruptive to cabs (well it is, but...) Uber is disruptive to car ownership. I even thought about it as I posted the excerpt. My love for my little MR2 is well known 'round these parts. But do I need a car?

I work from home. I have <60,000 miles on an eleven-year-old vehicle. I could scrap insurance and maintenance and just call Uber or Lyft when I want to go to Starbucks -- and probably come out spending less.

If that's not appealing -- and I confess it isn't to me, Uber replaces the second car of the exurban couple and the first car of the urban single millennial. As it becomes more popular or more automated, ride-sharing becomes a better substitute to car ownership. That disrupts parking, maintenance and all the cottage industries around private vehicle ownership.

You would not be the only doubter around ThreeSources (I may be the only believer) but you must admit that a move from ownership to sharing changes everything. Jenkins's point is that a move to EVs changes gas stations (and they probably just trade a row of pumps for chargers).

On the safety issue I will push back. I think that has been overblown, if not by big-Taxi, by luddites in general. There are some pretty horrific tales of very bad things from taxi drivers. The protection is not from Uber's comprehensive check -- it is from the rating. You only select a driver with a high and frequent ratings if you're a young woman coming home late from a bar. The safety is crowdsourced.

Every bad incident gets a lot of press -- I don't think that is a fair proxy for the relative safety.

jk - I just spent too much time typing out a thorough response, previewed it, hit post and had it blow up. I'm taking that as a sign that I need to be less verbose and prolix, so I'll just summarize.

The only reason Uber jumped out at me here is because I just read a cabbie's take on it last night - http://taxicabdepressions.com/?p=1759. I think the most important point he raised is that even if a cabbie isn't inherently safer, an Uber driver who screws up doesn't have commercial insurance to make you whole.

I think Uber is even less of a threat to private car ownership than it is to traditional cab companies. Too few of us base our transportation budgets on strict cost/benefit analyses. This is still a nation where full-size pickups are consistently among the top selling vehicles. Before people embrace the (possible) practicality of ride sharing, I'd expect them to at least take the baby step of not buying a fuel-guzzling cargo vehicle to use as a passenger car.

And they do AndyN, many of them, just not me or you. I think Holman's point of including Uber in this discussion was to illustrate just what it is to be "disruptive." It means a fundamental change in things, not just fueling your self-driven conveyance at a different "pump."

What you seem to be hung up on is the magnitude of Uber's disruption. I think we'd all agree that, for now, it is relatively small. But so was the horseless carriage in its infancy.

AndyN -- as ThreeSources' sysadmin, accept my sincerest apologies for technical failure.

Okay, let's put time scales on it and see if we cannot all get along. Short term, yes, Uber is much more of a threat to BigYellowTaxi; that is why they are fighting it tooth and nail. Long term, however -- and the reason for Mister Jenkins to call it disruptive -- is its potential to affect car ownership (disagree or not, there is potential).

Yes, they'll have to pry the steering wheel of brother jg's awesome 70 'Cuda from his cold dead fingers. I look at Lyft as Uber as transition to driverless cars. Yeah, we all like to read Kerouac, but commuting everyday, why not get driven and recapture the time you'd have spent. No parking, no insurance, no maintenance, no tipping the valet -- you get door to door service everywhere you go.

That is an appealing vision, and just the changes in parking qualify as disruptive. We can build bars on all those parking lots.

I get Uber and Lyft confused but at least one adds substantive insurance on top of what drivers are required to carry. There was a big contretemps over whether it is in effect on the way to pick up a client, but once the rider is onboard, he or she has that. I'm pretty skeptical of the cabdriver's word.

Lots of reasons for a truck, but I might turn your argument around. One buys for one's largest need. Maybe if truck-sharing becomes popular, you buy the Camry and call LyftGate when you need to go to Home Depot.

Oh, and 20,000 - 30,000 fewer people die every year. There's that. DUI, handicapped, 73-year old 60's icons...