Uber CEO 'not happy' with pickup times, price levels in U.S.

Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is speaking out about the ride hailing company’s rising prices and extended pickup times. Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita and Zack Guzman discuss.

Video Transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Uber is facing a challenge so many companies have talked about, more and more demand coming out of this pandemic with more people vaccinated, but they just don't have enough drivers to meet that demand. That's adding to higher prices, as well as longer wait times. Uber's CEO Dara Khosrowshahi discussing that at the JPMorgan Tech, Media, and Communications Conference, saying pretty bluntly that he's not happy about the situation either. Take a listen.

DARA KHOSROWSHAHI: ETAs are higher than we want them to be. Surge level prices have increased as we have not seen driver supply keep up with the demand growth in the US. So the supply position in the US is still something that we're working on. It's definitely getting better, but we're not happy with the ETAs and the price levels that we see. And that's something that we're certainly going to invest to improve on.

AKIKO FUJITA: And Zack, we were talking about it this morning. I mean, this is something that I've heard in conversation with friends, too. Just, people who use Uber have definitely noticed the price going up. We should point out that Uber has spent about $250 million on stimulus to try and bring the drivers back. But the demand is so high right now, they're just not able to meet it.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, we got that announcement, the more than 200 million that they were going to try and put in, a stimulus, they called it, for their drivers last month. And I mean, I guess, you know, if you're not happy with what's gone through here, then you got to do more to kind of incentivize drivers because the flip side of this, too, is cost to the riders are going up, at least anecdotally, just kind of traveling around.

And it's not just one city, not just New York. And we cover that area of the country quite a bit here on the show. But Dallas, Durham, everywhere I've been, it's been tougher and tougher to get a ride. Not just longer wait times, but the prices to actually get a driver. Even California have shot up quite a bit here. So I mean, what you can do, I suppose, is this is kind of what the company has been caught in, this kind of back and forth between contractors and employees.

The downside of having contractors here is that when they're in a pandemic, and all of a sudden, all those rides disappeared, what else are they to do? They go back to maybe other jobs out there or other things that seem more permanent. And that's just kind of, you know, you live by the sword, die by the sword, when it comes to what this company has been operating as. I don't think they should be as surprised to find themselves in this position.

AKIKO FUJITA: Well, and Zack, we should point out it's not just Uber. Lyft's CEO John Zimmer has also talked about this. We heard from DoorDash CEO Tony Xu on the back of their earnings recently, talking about that supply-demand gap. So something that a lot of these companies face, but you're right. When they're dealing with contractors, this is sort of the flip side of the argument, which is when they want to bring them back, they necessarily can't do it without additional stimulus out there.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, and I mean, obviously, I think a lot of viewers out there would echo Dara's comments there that it's not-- that they're not very happy with it right now because no one wants to wait on those ride--