Yeah, I think that was the bit where, when animated, the logo works. But rarely will a sticker on a car be animated, at least in this decade.

That said, designers often over-worry about logos initially. If you put enough marketing power behind it and the company is still on a growth curve, the logo will eventually become associated with the brand and it wont matter whether it was obviously a 'U', a Chinese coin or a ghost ;)

EDIT: The question now is, is uber on such a growth curve that they can still get away with this. My gut says 'no,' but only time will tell.

If your logo doesn't matter much later on, and therefore you shouldn't worry much about it early on, then when should you care about it?

It's not that the logo doesn't matter. It's that the specific shape of the logo doesn't matter. As long as it's unique and recognizable, over time it will come to be associated with your brand. As an example, think of car emblems. What does 4 rings have anything to do with Audi? The roundel with BMW? The bowtie with Chevrolet? Of course, these all have a historical significance, but there's no direct tie between the shapes and the name. It could just as easily be Audi's roundel and BMW's bowtie. But yet all are distinct visuals intimately tied to the brand.

Not much at all, or when you're bored, and have time to waste.

Does it look clean, professional and trustworthy? You have decent vector images of it? No negative associations? Just run with it, there's better things designer time can be spent on.

I think there's two reasons for changing it afterwards. It is starting to clash with the visual design of the site around it, and needs some touch-ups, or your company is moulting, and shedding it's past skin.

Indeed. This was my seconds thought, immediately following "Why are they using an inverted C for their logo?!"

I don't agree that looks like a U, but also they explicitly said they didn't want their brand to be based on an English letter.

Satsified? No. Made less obviously bad? Perhaps.

The Wired piece said they decided on that but then turned it sideways after seeing the State Bank of India logo.

I think they avoided that because of the state bank of india logo. Wired story mentioned that too.

Rotated, it appears to me like looking down someone's open mouth. Not a pleasant association at all.