GigaOM » taxi

Planes, trains and automobiles: Waymate unveils its ambitious travel comparison app

David Meyer — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:22:09 +0000

Berlin’s Waymate has launched its mobile app for comparing various local and long-distance transport options on the go.

We wrote about Waymate and its rival GoEuro last month – both companies are trying to navigate the world of travel comparison services, but Waymate is taking the extra step of letting people book journeys directly from the service, rather than sending them off to the train or plane operators’ websites.

As we noted at the time, this is difficult from a data point of view, due to the complexity of the various services on offer. There’s an even greater barrier, though, in the unwillingness of many operators to let a third-party service handle their bookings.

Despite these hurdles, Waymate’s iOS app is now out and its website is fully up and running. In this initial version, users cannot book journeys directly from the app – instead, they can select a journey then email themselves a link, allowing them to complete the booking on Waymate’s website. The service is also yet to be internationalized, meaning long-distance journeys need to originate in the Eurozone and local journeys can only be searched within major German cities.

The chief benefit of Waymate is the ability to compare all sorts of travel modes: planes, trains and automobiles (car-sharing schemes and taxis are included), as well as metro services and buses. Price and journey duration are clearly displayed on a visual timeline. Sensibly, Waymate has scrapped earlier plans to have two separate apps for local and long-distance travel: this one folds in both ideas.

“Now the task is to expand the app and the website with thrilling new features — especially in social networking — and to internationalize,” Waymate CEO Maxim Nohroudi said in a statement. “In short, we want travel planning to be completely simple and joyful.”

It’s an ambitious aim and one that (as far as I am aware) no-one has been able to achieve so far. It would be no surprise to see the app that finally pulls it off come out of Europe, as the fragmented nature of the market creates a substantial need for a service like this. Now let’s see how far Waymate’s rivals dive into this space.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Uber launches new enterprise product to hook employees on the service

Eliza Kern — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 21:22:02 +0000

What’s a good way to get more people hooked on Uber cars? The company is hoping that introducing them to Uber at work through a company program — Uber’s first foray into enterprise — isn’t a bad bet.

The company wrote in a blog post Thursday that it’s rolling out Uber perks to allow companies to distribute Uber credits to all their employees, designed for the size and scale of a particular group:

“Starting today, your company can offer these same transportation benefits through Uber Perks, our program for giving monthly Uber credits to people in your organization,” Uber wrote in the blog post.

Getting employees hooked on Uber through work would likely translate to more people using the service on weekends and off-work hours (when Uber pricing goes up.) The company has a history of trying out a variety of buzz-worthy marketing tactics, and has recently seen regulatory wins in states including California, prompting the company to note that it plans to roll out ride-sharing in the near future.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Uber closes down taxi service in NYC

Eliza Kern — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:44:55 +0000

Updated: Uber, the San Francisco-based town car reservation service that has recently moved into lower-cost taxis rides, announced Tuesday that it has shut down its New York taxi hailing operation, only months after launching the service. The difficulty in breaking into New York demonstrates the hurdles that startups face working against city regulations for transportation, and especially Uber’s challenges in cities that already have strong taxi cultures.

The company wrote in a blog post that user demand far outstripped available taxis, making it hard to meet the number of requests, and the company was unable to work with the city and get more taxis on the road:

Unfortunately, as many of you have noticed, there haven’t been enough available TAXIs. Demand far out-stripped supply, making you feel pretty lucky when you got a yellow from your iPhone. We did the best we could to get more yellows on the road but New York’s TLC (Taxi and Limousine Commission) put up obstacles and roadblocks in order to squash the effort around e-hail, which they privately have said is legal under the rules. We’ll bite our tongues and keep our frustration here to ourselves.

In September, Uber launched its taxi hailing service in addition to the existing black car service, a major risk in a city that leans heavily on its famous yellow cabs and has a strictly regulated taxi system. Uber had hoped that customer adoption and support of its taxi system would keep it going, but The Verge first reported that taxi drivers have been told Uber will no longer operate in New York and is encouraging them to become town car drivers instead.

Uber has been widely hailed as disrupting the existing taxi and city transportation system, and while it’s not the only such service, it’s been popular with techies and early adopters in cities like San Francisco and London. The company allows users to hail a car with the tap of a finger on a smartphone, take the car to their destination and leave without ever surfacing a credit card or cash. The company bills riders’ credit cards for the rides, which are typically more expensive than taxis. Expanding into taxis and lower-cost rides has been a recent move by Uber to capture a greater portion of the market.

Uber has run into regulatory hurdles in many cities, especially those where the taxis and town cars are more strictly regulated. The company had earlier regulatory problems in New York, where drivers are prohibited from using electronic devices while driving, a key part of Uber’s technology. In Chicago, the company is being sued by taxi companies for pocketing 50 percent of driver tips, and even in California it’s faced opposition from state regulators over insurance issues.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Chicago cab companies sue ‘hip’ car service Uber for pocketing 50% of driver tips

Jeff John Roberts — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:51:22 +0000

Taxi companies in Chicago want to run upstart car service, Uber, out of town. In a complaint filed Thursday in federal court, a coalition accuses Uber of trademark violations and consumer fraud for keeping a portion of the drivers’ tips.

The complaint says Uber is deceiving consumers about the amount they pay for the fares:

Uber adds an automatic “20% gratuity” onto the metered fare. Uber misleads the public and fails to disclose to consumers that only half of such “gratuity” actually goes to the driver. The remaining half, in fact, goes to Uber.

The taxi groups also claim that marketing terms like “Uber Black Car” and “Uber Taxi” violate trademark laws because they confuse consumers.

The Chicago dispute is the latest and most dramatic episode in a battle that is playing across the country as Uber competes with the powerful taxi lobby in various cities. The upstart has become a hit because it allows customers, who place their credit cards on file, to quickly summon a car with an app that recognizes their location and customers can rate the drivers at the end of the trip.

The taxi lobby is leaning heavily on city governments to shut down the service, claiming it is a danger to the public. In this week’s court complaint, the cab companies blast Uber for creating a two-tier taxi service that caters to rich hipsters (emphasis ours):

While Uber advertises itself as “Everyone’s Private Driver”—that is in fact a gross mischaracterization as Uber only chooses to cater to what it perceives as the technologically elite and well-off individuals. It is obvious that through Uber’s marketing it caters to young, hip, urban professionals, which is perfectly reasonable on the livery side. But using the publicly regulated (and limited number) taxis in order to create a two tier system— “high quality taxis” for the “haves” and the remainder for the “have nots”—runs contrary to the many ordinances enacted in Chicago to ensure non-discriminatory service for everyone in Chicago, not just those “cool” enough to use Uber.

The complaint, which is embedded below, seeks an injunction against Uber and damages to compensate the cabbies for lost profits.

Meanwhile, consumers have filed a separate class action lawsuit claiming they overpaid for Uber’s rides.

Update: This story has been amended to clarify that taxi companies, not drivers, are suing Uber. See Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s comment below.

Yellow Cab v Uber
(Image by sababa66 via Shutterstock)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Does Hailo have Uber on the run in New York’s taxi wars?

Bobbie Johnson — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 11:36:31 +0000

It looks like the battle for New York’s taxi market is heating up, as a group of leading startups struggle with the city’s regulations — and with each other.

Two good reports out overnight run through the state of play as Uber, the Californian town car service beloved by San Francisco’s technocracy, prepares to hit New York with an app for yellow cab booking. It’s Uber’s latest move from the high end of the market down the stream (the company has already introduced UberX lower-grade private car hire in SF and NYC) but it’s not coming easy: just as the app was supposed to be released, it’s hit a few snags.

A report in The New York Times runs through Uber’s situation, and outlines the concerns that the city, particularly the Taxi and Limousine Commission, has with its product.

…the program may have a significant problem: Taxi officials say that Uber’s service may not be legal since city rules do not allow for prearranged rides in yellow taxis. They also forbid cabbies from using electronic devices while driving and prohibit any unjustified refusal of fares. (Under Uber’s policy, once a driver accepts a ride through the app, no other passenger can be picked up.)

As a riposte, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick appears to be promising to launch the app for free to give riders “a taste of the future” (either a blessing or a Trojan horse, depending on where you sit).

But what’s really interesting is why Uber’s pushing to get to market so quickly. After all, it already has two services in New York. Can’t a third wait, just a little while?

No, says Betabeat in a great blow-by-blow breakdown of the situation, which points out that there may be something else prompting Uber’s speedy approach: the competition.

In particular, the company is heading for a straight-up clash with Hailo, the London-based taxi hailing service that is also preparing for its debut in New York. Hailo’s already going strong in London and has already built a service there that’s more in line with what yellow cabs would require, rather than a new product like Uber’s. As Betabeat says, Hailo “is planning on launching here in a couple of weeks. However, Hailo does not have explicit approval from the TLC either,” but it “has 2,500 pre-registered to use its app.”

Hailo has since stood by those numbers, and if they are in any way accurate, it’s got good reason to scare the living daylights out of Uber: that base of 2,500 drivers is way higher than Uber’s 105 — perhaps signaling why the San Francisco company wants to be first.

So who will win?

Trying to understand who’s going to emerge victorious is hard right now, not least because there’s only one city where Hailo and Uber are in competition, albeit indirectly, and that’s London.

There are no clear winners there, but it’s a brutal arena for anyone to fight in, so there may. I wrote about the complexities of that market earlier this summer in a post detailing precisely why Uber would find the British capital complex, confusing and highly competitive.

There are more rival startups in this space than I can count, and they aren’t simply clones of the San Francisco company. Some, like the well-backed Hailo, focus on black cabs. Others, like UbiCabs, are pointed toward the lower end of the private hire (minicab) market.

But Uber’s biggest rival in London comes from neither the world of black cabs or the world of tech startups. Private hire firm Addison Lee is the most significant player in the British capital’s upscale private driver market that Uber wants to dominate. It’s been around for a while, and it’s doing well: the company’s last financial filings say it ended up with £5.5 million of profit last year ($8.5 million) on revenues of £127 million ($198 million). Addison Lee may not be liked by all, but it is ubiquitous, connected, competitive and extremely aggressive.

I don’t think anything has changed since then.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that right now Hailo has the upper hand over its rival. Uber is spending heavily to try and build up a fleet of drivers, but finding it hard going, while Hailo is getting more traction and building up a strong community of black cab drivers and users. The economics of both are tough, and the markets they’re appealing to are slightly different, but Hailo is showing more signs of success in hostile conditions. Still, I’m going to dig in and see what more I can find out about this, because it’s a really interesting area.

One thing to remember, though: this isn’t a two-horse race.

Sure, there are other startups who could win — but I also think you shouldn’t forget the system. In Washington, the local legislature is looking at blocking Uber from offering lower-tier services, and while New York may not be run by the same sort of quislings, it has its own problems and inefficiencies. The march of progress might be inevitable, but that doesn’t mean Hailo, Uber or anyone else from this generation of startups will be able to overturn the TLC’s legal objections easily.

Taxi photo courtesy of Flickr userPankseelen

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

UbiCabs drives headlong into London taxi battle

Bobbie Johnson — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:30:07 +0000

London’s increasingly competitive taxi app space has a new player in the form of UbiCabs, a booking service that wants to grab a significant share of the British capital’s lucrative transport market.

Based around apps for Android and iOS, as well as a web-based interface, Ubi does a similar job to many other taxi apps — it lets you specify a pick-up point, a drop-off, schedule your service, compare prices and (when you’re happy) book a ride. The service has been working with local taxi firms for a while, but with a new update out now it is officially launching itself on Thursday.

Feedback from the public seems strong: reviewers on a variety of app stores say it’s quick and easy to use — both big positives. And when I tried using it this week the service gave me fast and inexpensive options to get across town, suggesting that the booking fees it charges to local cab companies — around 10 percent — aren’t too problematic (what it didn’t say was that central London traffic was snarled up beyond repair thanks to the Queen.)

But even with a smooth app and good relationships with suppliers, it’s going to face some stiff competition.

London’s taxi market is a complex thing, with several segments that overlap with each other. The iconic black cabs — metered, costly, reliable — compete with a range of high-end private hire vehicles and lower end minicabs. And all of these different segments have a queue of companies and entrepreneurs trying to disrupt them and bring users

UbiCabs is focused on the minicab market, but the broad Venn diagram of options available to Londoners means that in various ways it’s competing for mindshare with the likes of Hailo, which scored $17 million of funding just over a month ago, the Israel-based Get Taxi, price comparison service Kabbee and many more. And, of course, the specter of Uber, which is looking to launch in London in the not-too-distant future, looms large as well.

In order to tackle that level of rivalry, the team are relying on their sales chutzpah, as well as their credentials. The founders are former Googler Jay Patel; Lorenzo Caffarri, a logistics tech expert whose background includes French retail giant Carrefour; and Prem Sharma, formerly of customer experience startup Fizzback, which sold last year for $80 million.

The trio developed the idea while getting their MBAs at the London Business School, and subsequently raised angel investment from fellow alumni Sean Phelan (Multimap, bought by Microsoft in 2007) and Joe Bitran (Travelhire).

Phelan, who sits on the company’s board, told me that he sees Ubi as part of a continuum of booking services that stretches back to the first airline reservations systems in the 1940s and 1950s — and has slowly spread through into markets like travel and restaurants: all of which achieve efficiency and make booking faster and easier.

And while that efficiency is useful for letting customers find the best deals, it also has significant benefits for taxi companies — reducing the amount of idle time for drivers, making bookings more solid, and allowing them to plan their dispatching.

“The reduction in fear, uncertainty and doubt that it brings to the passengers and also the drivers is really substantial,” said Phelan. “Taxis spend maybe 55 percent of their time idling or without a fare. It’s a bit of a no-brainer that this situation can be improved.”

What next? The company is working on Windows Phone and BlackBerry apps, and building features to help people share their journeys on Facebook — great for lone travellers to signal to their friends and family that their late-night journey home is a safe one.

More to the point, there’s growth. Phelan suggested that although the company was under no financial pressure, it would be looking for a significant series A round in the future to help it scale up. UbiCabs is already running in other British cities on a limited basis, and Phelan said the ambition was to create a joined-up service across Europe that can work for all users, wherever they are.

“I’m a keen sailor,” said Phelan. “I’m taking my boat through the Mediterranean. When we’re in a new place, all the time, it’s always the same hassle of getting a taxi. I would like to be able to arrive in my boat in some little village in Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain — I want to be able to anchor off a beach, go ashore, and click to book and get a confirmation that a taxi is on the way. And it happens.”

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Your next NYC cab ride could be in a mobile office

Kevin C. Tofel — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 13:28:37 +0000

Nissan has a contract to deliver a fleet of new taxicabs to New York City starting in 2013, according to Bloomberg on Wednesday. The new model, dubbed the NV200 minivan, is less a traditional cab and more of a comfortable mobile office with more amenities and leg room than a standard cubicle. Safety features add to the package, which Nissan has priced at $29,700 in the city contract.

So what can a mobile professional expect in the new cab? There’s whopping 10-inch more leg room in the NV 200 than in a Ford Crown Victoria, which is helped by the fully flat floor. That should make it easy to work a laptop or tablet, even if you want to stretch out or cross your legs. Your mobile office will smell fresh and clean thanks to air-filtration — with a grape phenol-coated air filter – and cooling system controlled by the passenger. The fabric seats are made with an antimicrobial vinyl resin so workspace germs need not apply.

Perhaps the best functions — from a productivity standpoint, that is — are those to keep mobile device batteries topped off. Nissan included 12-volt electric outlets and a pair of USB ports to recharge phones, tablets and other portables.

The only problem I see with the new cabs is the transparent roof. Sure, you’ll get a nice view of New York’s architecture and sky, but that won’t help those looking down at their mobile device screen. We’ll have to get Ryan Kim, our mobile man in the Big Apple to get a test drive in one of these to check it out!

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.