The Birth of Uber: A Reinvention of Traditional Transportation Services
Many people have heard of an application called Uber, which started as a “map on a smartphone, that [connects] a driver with a passenger based on GPS.” Uber, formally called UberCab, is a convenient, safe, and inexpensive taxi service. Anyone can download the application on their smartphone for free and sign up to make an account. When the passenger first opens the application, they can see what cars are available and how fast the driver can pick them up. It also shows different car options, varying between cars that can hold 1–6 passengers. The rider sets a meeting point where the driver will be sent to pick up the rider in minutes. Uber now provides on-demand car service in 350 cities and 77 countries worldwide.
The company was started by Garrett Camp and Travis Kalanick. After Camp spent $800 dollars hiring a private driver with friends on New Year’s Eve in 2008, he realized that sharing the cost of a private driver with other people could make it more affordable.Thus, the idea for Uber was born. In 2009, Camp began working on a prototype. He convinced Kalanick to join him to create the first version of the application called UberCab.”The service was tested in New York in early 2010 using only three cars, and the official launch took place in San Francisco in May.” Since then, Uber has not really changed much from the original idea. In an interview conducted by Zeitgeistminds, Camp says, “Probably about 90% of [Uber] is the same as the original vision.” The current CEO of Uber is Dara Khosrowshahi, who recently replaced Travis Kalanick in August of 2017.
A very helpful feature that Uber has to offer is upfront pricing. As soon as the passenger types in their destination, it gives them the estimated fare for the entire ride, which is typically very inexpensive. A rider can expect to pay anywhere from five dollars and up. The rider can easily link their credit card with their Uber account so that they are automatically charged after every ride. However, Uber has something called surge pricing. When the demands for rides go up, the prices increase. Uber’s website states,”There are times when so many people are requesting rides that there aren’t enough cars on the road to help take them all. Bad weather, rush hour, and special events, for instance, may cause unusually large numbers of people to want to ride Uber all at the same time.” When this happens, riders can choose to pay the surge pricing or wait a few minutes to see if the rates return to normal.
Although most people are just passengers while using Uber, others apply to become a driver. It is a great way to have flexible working hours and earn extra cash in the comfort of your own vehicle. Uber has a few minimum requirements that need to be met in order to become a driver. To drive for Uber, you must “Be at least 21 years of age, have at least one year of driving experience in the U.S. (3 years if you are under 23 years old), have a valid U.S. driver’s license, use an eligible 4-door vehicle, have proof of vehicle insurance/registration, and go through an online screening of driving record and criminal history.” There are about 150,000 Uber drivers worldwide. Uber drivers can also decide which hours they want to drive. In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Travis Kalanick stated, “You can use your own car, you don’t pay $40,000 dollars to rent a vehicle [like a taxi company], you make more dollars per hour, and it’s flexible because you don’t have a shift. You can turn on your work when you want to and you can turn it off.” This is a reason that many people decide to become an Uber driver opposed to a taxi driver.
The Uber application also has a rating system, where the passenger can rate the driver and vice versa. It is based on a 5-star point system, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. After every trip, both the rider and the driver are asked to rate each other .”The ratings are averaged out and each rider and driver is then assigned a score.” As a rider, if the rating score becomes too low, you will not be able to request rides and will be removed from the application. If the driver’s rating score becomes too low, then the driving privileges will be revoked. The rating system is a great way to get feedback on each ride and make sure that both the driver and the passenger are behaving.
This leads to the question, “Is Uber safe?” “Uber insists it meets the highest standards for safety, and says its background-check process has been in place since April [of 2014].” When a person applies to be a taxi driver, they have to be fingerprinted, which includes that person’s complete criminal history throughout the United States.This is something that Uber does not do. An Uber driving from Washington D.C. said, “This [background check] is just online. A real background check is not like this. [For] a real background check, the government approves you and checks everything. But Uber checks kind of. They’re kind of background checks.” However, once an incident is reported to Uber, the driver is automatically suspended while an investigation is underway. Most of the same risks with riding in a taxi apply to riding with Uber.
Uber has had great success, the company is valued at $68 billion dollars. Uber is competing with taxi companies and other on-demand ride services such as Lyft, Curb and Didi Chuxing. “Taxi business declined a stunning 65 percent in a two year period after Uber showed up in San Francisco.” In February of 2017, the #DeleteUber movement became a trend on Twitter after President Donald Trump’s travel ban on seven Muslim majority countries caused uprising in airports. “When Uber turned off surge pricing shortly after a taxi strike in opposition of the ban (the strike was in effect from 6 to 7 p.m., and the tweet announcing the lift in surge pricing appeared at 7:36 p.m.) it was read as an affront to the protesters and social media rage hit ride-hailing company like a brick.” Many people took this action as a sign of support of President Trump’s controversial travel ban.This began a huge dispute with Uber causing many users deciding to switch to Lyft. It is reported that 200,000 customers had deleted their Uber accounts after this incident. But 200,000 is a fraction of Uber’s total users, which is estimated to be 40 million a month.
Uber’s success is attributed to the fact that it is easy, convenient, and cheap. It has completely reinvented the taxicab industry, providing private transportation in areas where taxicabs are not readily available. “They didn’t fix one aspect of the system (such as mobile payments for the existing taxi infrastructure), they tackled the whole experience from mobile hailing, seamless payments, better cars, to no tips and driver ratings.” Uber is still expanding and adding new features such as UberEats, a food delivery platform where a customer can order food from a local restaurant and have it delivered to their home by a driver. The future of Uber is a good one, with new ideas and changes to the application being made regularly.