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Uber’s No-Holds-Barred Expansion Strategy Fizzles in Germany

34 points by mgav 11y ago

Nursie 11y ago
I'm surprised this hasn't happened in more places. Perhaps it will. While the cap on the number of taxis in the city at 1700 does seem ridiculous and I'm not sure about the need for much in the way of qualifications in the age of ubiquitous GPS devices, regulated insurance and health requirements are not unreasonable. But personally I just don't see the need for Uber - why do I need a global taxi-megacorp running the show in my town and taking 20%? We already have several cab services that have apps (complete with map-based tracking) and allow credit-card payment. Plus they all comply with the various city rules and regs about carrying passengers, fare transparency etc.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  > While the cap on the number of taxis in the city at 1700 does seem ridiculous Why? There are already too many taxis on German roads. It might be that in peak times you have to wait a couple of minutes, but 20-22 hours of the days the taxis sit idle.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    I guess the concept of a cap seems odd, when one could let the market decide. Not that I'm the sort that believes that the market always results in optimal outcomes or anything, but it does seem weird.
    - mmarx 11y ago
      > I guess the concept of a cap seems odd, when one could let the market decide. Keep in mind that, like busses and trams, taxis are considered part of the public transport infrastructure in Germany. One particular consequence is that taxi drivers are not allowed to refuse fares, and that fare prices are fixed.
      - Nursie 11y ago
        Yes that is the same where I live (at least the fixed prices). Come to think of it, I have no idea if we have a cap here!
    - novalis78 11y ago
      Well, not for Germany, where the free market is always eyed suspiciously when a superior government bureaucracy could tell you what's in your best interest. I hope the Sarcasm was noticable.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        I didn't notice it. But then again, I've seen time and again markets come to awful end results without regulation.
    - Brakenshire 11y ago
      > I guess the concept of a cap seems odd Yeah, it does initially to me as well, but I suppose it's just another public policy lever for transportation, and acts a bit like congestion charging. For instance, in a lot of very busy streets in London, due to congestion, pollution, and desire to improve public space, there are debates about pedestrianization, or allowing through only buses, or allowing only buses and taxis, or allowing that plus local access. For instance, Oxford Street (which has half a million pedestrians each day) shifted some years back to only allow through buses and taxis, to improve throughput and reduce pollution, and the new mayoral candidates are now thinking about pedestrianization. Ultimately, one person siting in a cab occupies the same space as 10-15 pedestrians (at Oxford Street densities), or perhaps 5 bus passengers. Further east, Tottenham Court Road is getting a new Crossrail station (a new tube line), and is going to widen the pavements, and ban private cars, in order to deal with the massive expected increase in passengers. Taxis are more efficient than private cars, but much less so than other options, so it just depends on the context for the city centre, or the city as a whole, or for particular streets, as to how appropriate they are. One niche that major taxi app services could fit into, in these contexts, is by enabling a system for pooling / shared-use. A London taxi with 4/5 people is probably no less efficient than a bus, and to do something like that takes scale and serious optimization work.
      - mschuster91 11y ago
        > A London taxi with 4/5 people is probably no less efficient than a bus It is far less efficient. A bus can hold 60 passengers and more, with one driver and one engine. The same amount of passengers would require ten cabs, ten drivers and ten engines.
        Brakenshire 11y ago
        On reflection, you're right. Perhaps three taxis occupy the same road space as one bus, if they're full that might mean 15 people, compared to perhaps 30 on a single-decker, and 60 on a double-decker bus. But still, I would say there's potential for high-occupancy taxis to play a role. In the future it may well be that the distinctions between buses, taxis and Uber-style service gets blurred. I remember reading that there are already trials in Finland for on-demand buses which dynamically alter their route to pick up and deliver passengers.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Exactly. In a world where Taxi.eu and good working public transit exist, Uber has issues to justify breaking laws – as the existing methods provide the same service, for the same costs, and follow the laws. And Uber’s "end time strategy" of using self-driving cars won’t change anything in Germany – where Mercedes Benz has a majority share in MyTaxi, another ridesharing app – either. Additionally, Uber competitors have existed since 2007 in Germany, making it a market where the legal fights have long been fought and solved. I, personally, even like that Uber can’t get a foothold. Because now the profits from the fares end up in the local economy. If Uber would be the majority ridesharing app, a large amount of the profits of the local ridesharing and taxi economy would be siphoned off to Wall Street.
- lmm 11y ago
  Tourists need taxis more than locals do. Being able to use the same app to book a taxi in any city is really handy.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    Well, that’s an issue that can be solved in different ways than monopolizing the market and transferring 20% of every fare to foreign investors, though. Just publish an API for your service, and write an app that can connect to every service that provides the same API.
    - thejosh 11y ago
      So simple! Let's just hook into every country where Uber has taxis to create a mega app that will allow you to travel to any country and have access to the following: - Ordering of taxis via the app - Takes credit card information (atleast securely) - Ratings of drivers to weed out the bad ones - GPS to show how far the driver is, how far you are from your destination - Your destination syncs to the drivers device, so they know where the fuck they are going for a change - Tax invoices on completion of drive - Allow to change from business / personal accounts on the fly. - Semi good customer service - Fare estimate (including surge pricing, surcharges) to destination - Split fare easy - App that is on both iOS AND Android - App that doesn't suck and crash.
      - Nursie 11y ago
        Given that several of my local taxi services already cover a lot of this with their apps - Ordering, payment, GPS, invoices, account management, fares etc - it's my guess that there's already an enterprising software house out there selling skin-able apps for most of this. Hooking it into multiple systems would be the technical challenge, the rest seems a solved problem. Oh, and some folks (probably mostly Europeans) don't really like the driver-ratings thing. It's an end-run around little things like employment rights. A ratings scheme for the individual taxi companies providing the services perhaps is useful, but not individual driver ratings.
- song 11y ago
  Right now Uber is beneficial because it brings competition in a sector that used to have none. There's a huge difference in term of service in cities that have Uber and cities that do not. Taxi service in cities without competition is awful Just as an example, when coming back by train late at night I along with 4 other passengers waited at the taxi stand from the train station for 40 minutes to get a taxi (and that is despite having called the central before to confirm that there would be taxies). And when the first taxi finally arrived, he refused to allow us to share a taxi to go to different destinations, which meant more waiting. It's just anecdote, but it's something that's happened quite often to me and my friends and it's why we're happy that Uber comes to finally bring some competition. Of course, if Uber got the monopole on taxi service, I'm under no illusion that they would be benevolent, any monopolistic situation is detrimental to service and prices. I believe though that the barrier of entry to compete against Uber in the future would be much lower than competing against the current taxi lobbies so I don't think Uber would ever get enough shares of the market to be a monopole (based on the money they are losing by subsidizing fares in China and India, I think that owning a big share of the market and being in a monopolistic position is there plan, I believe it's doomed to fail though).
  - kuschku 11y ago
    But that happened already 8 years ago in Germany. Check out taxi.eu – an app from the Taxi companies, offering the same service as uber. Or MyTaxi. The German market already went through that phase, competition is there – it’s just not uber.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    >> Right now Uber is beneficial because it brings competition in a sector that used to have none. There's a huge difference in term of service in cities that have Uber and cities that do not. Taxi service in cities without competition is awful My city (Southampton, UK) has competition already, without Uber. I guess the situation is different in different places, but to me there is no value proposition in Uber. In fact the prospect of a large multinational taxi-corp moving in could make things worse if it damages the ecosystem we have in place here already (and have had for many years).
  - 11y ago
- odonnellryan 11y ago
  Uber is popular in my area (NJ, US) because of those taxi companies: 1) Never being open late at night 2) Not having apps/hard to get a hold of 3) Not speaking English: not a problem in itself, but having to fight with them because they missed your exit, or they're taking an insane way to get there, is made harder if you cannot communicate. Uber is super simple, relatively cheap, and almost always available.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    Fair enough, I can see why it appeals in your city. In my city (no Uber here) I was able to use an app for a local firm to book a cab at 11.30pm on Christmas day, get an arrival estimate before booking (9 minutes as it happened), track it on a map etc. etc.
    - odonnellryan 11y ago
      That sounds awesome! Uber would have had surge pricing in your scenario, most likely. NYE it was like 3X.
      - Nursie 11y ago
        Heh, I think the city transport authority sets the rates here, but I'm also pretty sure they set 1.5-2x rates for Christmas Day and NYE. Not the same sort of mechanism as surge pricing, but similar outcome I guess. I am beginning to wonder if Southampton is uniquely well served by cabs. We're only a small city but we do seem to do pretty well.
- vslira 11y ago
  I agree that we shouldn't need Uber, but when municipalities all over the world cap individual transportation supply for no reason whatsoever, I'm happy that there's a megacorp calling them out on their crap.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    How widespread is this practice? And why should they be called on this crap? Perhaps a limit on private-hire cars is part of the city's public transport and clean-air initiatives in some cases? I've thought about it a bit more now, and those are valid reasons, IMHO. Obviously if the cap is there for arbitrary reasons or simply to protect incumbents then that's different.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      I think that's the value of Uber: to stir things up and force the whole city - government and citizens - to evaluate whether these rules still make sense, often many decades after they've been passed. If the city decides they do, they can simply keep Uber away just like Frankfurt and others did. But for example: if the restriction is based on clean-air initiatives, why does it apply to EVs? Why do we have fixed spots for taxis to wait for fares, when we know can cheaply and easily call them up from anywhere?
  - pgeorgi 11y ago
    Since the article picked out Frankfurt, Germany: There are reasons, and they're pretty simple to understand by reading the appropriate law (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/ http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/) Taxis are part of the local public transit network here (and regulated by county officials). §13(4) is about when to grant new taxi licenses, incl. a pretty detailed set of things for officials to look out for. §13(5) is concerned with who is granted new licenses (established and new applicants, but folks need to be serious about running a taxi business; the latter precludes the 'on-and-off' Uber model), with an eye on avoiding concentration of power. These things (along with all the other rules for public transit in general and taxis in particular in that law) make sense when considering taxis to be part of public infrastructure that just has to work, and not some investors' toy. I can understand that investors and their minions running shops like Uber aren't happy about that, but luckily that was no concern when people wrote legislation on providing reliable infrastructure. Uber was particularly tone-deaf here when pushing their all-American pitch about how they're taking on some evil monopoly (when in a city of 200'000 people, there's not a single taxi company commanding 25 cars. Most have 5 or less).
- drinchev 11y ago
  Disclaimer : I live in Berlin and work in IT. The benefit that Uber gives me here in Berlin, for me, is really big : 1) Global usage ( I travel a lot around Europe and I can use the same app everywhere, no need to look for a local app ) 2) Using app that is potentially / economically better. I certainly expect less bugs than the other apps. 3) All english user interface for every country I go to and pay using the same credit card. 4) Rating drivers So ... IMHO The big potential of Uber is that it tries to solve the taxi problem everywhere. Just like booking.com for the whole world. Competitor solution for this problem is MyTaxi. It is popular in Berlin and I also used it in Lisbon last week.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    I don't want to rate drivers and I think Uber's rating practices are basically evil. I can see the appeal in the global nature of the app, certainly.
    - chrisseaton 11y ago
      > I think Uber's rating practices are basically evil Wow that's strong. Can you explain further?
      - th0br0 11y ago
        Probably because you essentially rate a service without having a fixed rating scale. Rating _people_ is always purely subjective and therefore judgmental - yet this is what Uber wants you to do. (Leaving aside the potential economic impact of such ratings...)
        chrisseaton 11y ago
        The scale thing is problematic. In practice I think on Uber 5 is 'service was fine' and anything less basically gets the driver fired. Nobody told me this though so I was rating drivers a 3 by default for a few months. Hopefully I didn't end anyone's career!
- pjc50 11y ago
  Just like Chehkov's "unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way", each city's taxis have their own local equilibrium of good or bad functioning. American cities stereotypically have areas where the taxis refuse to go; they have terrible public transport, so there is no competition and no alternative; and they have sprawl, so you can't just walk home. They also have strangely protectionist taxi companies in some places, often linked to permit sale schemes. Uber goes anywhere, offers much better customer service, and increases supply regardless of permits. You can order online and pay by credit card. But if your city doesn't have those problems, then Uber is not a good value proposition and it's just a question of convenience. Many local taxi organisations have already adapted to online ordering any paying by credit card.
- raddad 11y ago
  " and taking 20%?" Typical taxi here in the US, company takes 65% unless you rent your car from them, and I don't know how it works after that. Typical employment interview consists of "Is there a pulse? Yes? You are hired."
  - Nursie 11y ago
    Maybe the company does take 65%, but they're taking 65% and keeping it in the local economy, not spiriting it away overseas via some tax-haven or other. That's the point I was making.
kuschku 11y ago
Previous discussion on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830365
jagermo 11y ago
I never used Uber in Munich. It never really came up for me, mostly because of the excellent public transportation network. Because of the traffic, whenever possible I use the metro or the tram, busses if I have to. The few times I need a car, I just grab one from a carsharing service.
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  For locals, absolutely agreed. However, for travelers, consider the relative ease of public transportation versus an Uber or similar, especially if you don't speak the native language. Public transportation systems can still potentially work if you've learned the system, have a guide, or have clear instructions and don't get lost. Without any of those, I personally find it a lot easier to take an Uber where you want to go than to work out how a local public transportation system works that I probably won't use again for years. At conferences where the organizers provide extremely clear directions for taking public transportation from the airport to the conference venue and back, I've used it. At any other conference, I generally take an Uber, unless the local city does the obnoxious thing and bans them from picking up at the airport. If some other service existed that worked consistently in every city, I'd try it.
  - kuschku 11y ago
    I went a few weeks ago for the first time in my life to Hamburg. And I managed to figure out their transit system well enough to know how to get from where to where. There are plans, it’s simple. And especially the price difference – 6$ a day with transit, or 20$ for a dozen kilometers with taxi – is definitely worth it.
bitL 11y ago
Frankly, I don't see any appeal for Uber in Europe - here most Taxis can be called/booked online and dispatch a car to wherever you are within 5 minutes. I understand in the US this is difficult and is the main appeal of Uber. Here in Europe - well, we had this for around 15 years already, what's the point?
- song 11y ago
  I wish that were actually true in France and in Portugal...
- jmspring 11y ago
  It's an incredibly small niche, but for someone from the US traveling to Europe for business, Uber (and similar apps) are useful to remove the need for cash (i.e., use credit cards -- particularly corporate Amex) in booking a ride. I've used this in Paris and Munich in the last year.
  - claudius 11y ago
    > useful to remove the need for cash (i.e., use credit cards -- particularly corporate Amex) in booking a ride. > I've used this in Paris and Munich in the last year. Did you manage in Munich without cash at all? My expectation would have been that you needed cash regardless to pay for (most) small things (coffee, bakeries etc. etc.). Credit or even debit card use is not very widespread, essentially the only time I use mine is at ATMs and to pay online for services that don’t support direct debit.
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    There are still taxis in Europe in 2016 that don't take credit cards? I would have expected the opposite (lots of places don't take cash because of risks etc). If the taxis in your city don't take credit cards, or you can't book online, or there is no competition, then just petition your local authority to fix it before Uber comes along and "fixes" it.
  - david-given 11y ago
    And removing the need for tipping, which is a nightmare for anyone who's not used to the local customs.
illumen 11y ago
There are better taxi apps, and ride sharing platforms in Germany too. Something the article willfully neglected to mention.
geff82 11y ago
You are also free to negociate your own fare. The Taxi to the airport costs 40€ at my place, but I get it for 25 by my local taxi driver, night and day. Uber was more expensive the single time I could legally use it.
harryf 11y ago
> Uber has also asked the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, to intervene, and an official European investigation into Germany’s ban on UberPop — along with similar rulings in France and Spain — is expected to be completed sometime this year. Will be interesting to see how this goes. Uber makes heavy use of lobbyists in the US [1]. Would the same work with the EU? [1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-has-a-huge-group-of-lobbyists-to-help-it-take-over-the-world-2014-12 http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-has-a-huge-group-of-lobby...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Let's hope not. Though if n=1 observation of how the local startup community in my city jumped forward to genuflect in front of Uber (and they have connections) means anything, I wouldn't be surprised. There are a lot of people who don't know or don't care about Uber's evil side.

34 points by mgav 11y ago

I'm surprised this hasn't happened in more places. Perhaps it will. While the cap on the number of taxis in the city at 1700 does seem ridiculous and I'm not sure about the need for much in the way of qualifications in the age of ubiquitous GPS devices, regulated insurance and health requirements are not unreasonable. But personally I just don't see the need for Uber - why do I need a global taxi-megacorp running the show in my town and taking 20%? We already have several cab services that have apps (complete with map-based tracking) and allow credit-card payment. Plus they all comply with the various city rules and regs about carrying passengers, fare transparency etc.

mschuster91 11y ago
> While the cap on the number of taxis in the city at 1700 does seem ridiculous Why? There are already too many taxis on German roads. It might be that in peak times you have to wait a couple of minutes, but 20-22 hours of the days the taxis sit idle.
- Nursie 11y ago
  I guess the concept of a cap seems odd, when one could let the market decide. Not that I'm the sort that believes that the market always results in optimal outcomes or anything, but it does seem weird.
  - mmarx 11y ago
    > I guess the concept of a cap seems odd, when one could let the market decide. Keep in mind that, like busses and trams, taxis are considered part of the public transport infrastructure in Germany. One particular consequence is that taxi drivers are not allowed to refuse fares, and that fare prices are fixed.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      Yes that is the same where I live (at least the fixed prices). Come to think of it, I have no idea if we have a cap here!
  - novalis78 11y ago
    Well, not for Germany, where the free market is always eyed suspiciously when a superior government bureaucracy could tell you what's in your best interest. I hope the Sarcasm was noticable.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      I didn't notice it. But then again, I've seen time and again markets come to awful end results without regulation.
  - Brakenshire 11y ago
    > I guess the concept of a cap seems odd Yeah, it does initially to me as well, but I suppose it's just another public policy lever for transportation, and acts a bit like congestion charging. For instance, in a lot of very busy streets in London, due to congestion, pollution, and desire to improve public space, there are debates about pedestrianization, or allowing through only buses, or allowing only buses and taxis, or allowing that plus local access. For instance, Oxford Street (which has half a million pedestrians each day) shifted some years back to only allow through buses and taxis, to improve throughput and reduce pollution, and the new mayoral candidates are now thinking about pedestrianization. Ultimately, one person siting in a cab occupies the same space as 10-15 pedestrians (at Oxford Street densities), or perhaps 5 bus passengers. Further east, Tottenham Court Road is getting a new Crossrail station (a new tube line), and is going to widen the pavements, and ban private cars, in order to deal with the massive expected increase in passengers. Taxis are more efficient than private cars, but much less so than other options, so it just depends on the context for the city centre, or the city as a whole, or for particular streets, as to how appropriate they are. One niche that major taxi app services could fit into, in these contexts, is by enabling a system for pooling / shared-use. A London taxi with 4/5 people is probably no less efficient than a bus, and to do something like that takes scale and serious optimization work.
    - mschuster91 11y ago
      > A London taxi with 4/5 people is probably no less efficient than a bus It is far less efficient. A bus can hold 60 passengers and more, with one driver and one engine. The same amount of passengers would require ten cabs, ten drivers and ten engines.
      - Brakenshire 11y ago
        On reflection, you're right. Perhaps three taxis occupy the same road space as one bus, if they're full that might mean 15 people, compared to perhaps 30 on a single-decker, and 60 on a double-decker bus. But still, I would say there's potential for high-occupancy taxis to play a role. In the future it may well be that the distinctions between buses, taxis and Uber-style service gets blurred. I remember reading that there are already trials in Finland for on-demand buses which dynamically alter their route to pick up and deliver passengers.
kuschku 11y ago
Exactly. In a world where Taxi.eu and good working public transit exist, Uber has issues to justify breaking laws – as the existing methods provide the same service, for the same costs, and follow the laws. And Uber’s "end time strategy" of using self-driving cars won’t change anything in Germany – where Mercedes Benz has a majority share in MyTaxi, another ridesharing app – either. Additionally, Uber competitors have existed since 2007 in Germany, making it a market where the legal fights have long been fought and solved. I, personally, even like that Uber can’t get a foothold. Because now the profits from the fares end up in the local economy. If Uber would be the majority ridesharing app, a large amount of the profits of the local ridesharing and taxi economy would be siphoned off to Wall Street.
lmm 11y ago
Tourists need taxis more than locals do. Being able to use the same app to book a taxi in any city is really handy.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Well, that’s an issue that can be solved in different ways than monopolizing the market and transferring 20% of every fare to foreign investors, though. Just publish an API for your service, and write an app that can connect to every service that provides the same API.
  - thejosh 11y ago
    So simple! Let's just hook into every country where Uber has taxis to create a mega app that will allow you to travel to any country and have access to the following: - Ordering of taxis via the app - Takes credit card information (atleast securely) - Ratings of drivers to weed out the bad ones - GPS to show how far the driver is, how far you are from your destination - Your destination syncs to the drivers device, so they know where the fuck they are going for a change - Tax invoices on completion of drive - Allow to change from business / personal accounts on the fly. - Semi good customer service - Fare estimate (including surge pricing, surcharges) to destination - Split fare easy - App that is on both iOS AND Android - App that doesn't suck and crash.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      Given that several of my local taxi services already cover a lot of this with their apps - Ordering, payment, GPS, invoices, account management, fares etc - it's my guess that there's already an enterprising software house out there selling skin-able apps for most of this. Hooking it into multiple systems would be the technical challenge, the rest seems a solved problem. Oh, and some folks (probably mostly Europeans) don't really like the driver-ratings thing. It's an end-run around little things like employment rights. A ratings scheme for the individual taxi companies providing the services perhaps is useful, but not individual driver ratings.
song 11y ago
Right now Uber is beneficial because it brings competition in a sector that used to have none. There's a huge difference in term of service in cities that have Uber and cities that do not. Taxi service in cities without competition is awful Just as an example, when coming back by train late at night I along with 4 other passengers waited at the taxi stand from the train station for 40 minutes to get a taxi (and that is despite having called the central before to confirm that there would be taxies). And when the first taxi finally arrived, he refused to allow us to share a taxi to go to different destinations, which meant more waiting. It's just anecdote, but it's something that's happened quite often to me and my friends and it's why we're happy that Uber comes to finally bring some competition. Of course, if Uber got the monopole on taxi service, I'm under no illusion that they would be benevolent, any monopolistic situation is detrimental to service and prices. I believe though that the barrier of entry to compete against Uber in the future would be much lower than competing against the current taxi lobbies so I don't think Uber would ever get enough shares of the market to be a monopole (based on the money they are losing by subsidizing fares in China and India, I think that owning a big share of the market and being in a monopolistic position is there plan, I believe it's doomed to fail though).
- kuschku 11y ago
  But that happened already 8 years ago in Germany. Check out taxi.eu – an app from the Taxi companies, offering the same service as uber. Or MyTaxi. The German market already went through that phase, competition is there – it’s just not uber.
- Nursie 11y ago
  >> Right now Uber is beneficial because it brings competition in a sector that used to have none. There's a huge difference in term of service in cities that have Uber and cities that do not. Taxi service in cities without competition is awful My city (Southampton, UK) has competition already, without Uber. I guess the situation is different in different places, but to me there is no value proposition in Uber. In fact the prospect of a large multinational taxi-corp moving in could make things worse if it damages the ecosystem we have in place here already (and have had for many years).
- 11y ago
odonnellryan 11y ago
Uber is popular in my area (NJ, US) because of those taxi companies: 1) Never being open late at night 2) Not having apps/hard to get a hold of 3) Not speaking English: not a problem in itself, but having to fight with them because they missed your exit, or they're taking an insane way to get there, is made harder if you cannot communicate. Uber is super simple, relatively cheap, and almost always available.
- Nursie 11y ago
  Fair enough, I can see why it appeals in your city. In my city (no Uber here) I was able to use an app for a local firm to book a cab at 11.30pm on Christmas day, get an arrival estimate before booking (9 minutes as it happened), track it on a map etc. etc.
  - odonnellryan 11y ago
    That sounds awesome! Uber would have had surge pricing in your scenario, most likely. NYE it was like 3X.
    - Nursie 11y ago
      Heh, I think the city transport authority sets the rates here, but I'm also pretty sure they set 1.5-2x rates for Christmas Day and NYE. Not the same sort of mechanism as surge pricing, but similar outcome I guess. I am beginning to wonder if Southampton is uniquely well served by cabs. We're only a small city but we do seem to do pretty well.
vslira 11y ago
I agree that we shouldn't need Uber, but when municipalities all over the world cap individual transportation supply for no reason whatsoever, I'm happy that there's a megacorp calling them out on their crap.
- Nursie 11y ago
  How widespread is this practice? And why should they be called on this crap? Perhaps a limit on private-hire cars is part of the city's public transport and clean-air initiatives in some cases? I've thought about it a bit more now, and those are valid reasons, IMHO. Obviously if the cap is there for arbitrary reasons or simply to protect incumbents then that's different.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    I think that's the value of Uber: to stir things up and force the whole city - government and citizens - to evaluate whether these rules still make sense, often many decades after they've been passed. If the city decides they do, they can simply keep Uber away just like Frankfurt and others did. But for example: if the restriction is based on clean-air initiatives, why does it apply to EVs? Why do we have fixed spots for taxis to wait for fares, when we know can cheaply and easily call them up from anywhere?
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  Since the article picked out Frankfurt, Germany: There are reasons, and they're pretty simple to understand by reading the appropriate law (http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/ http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/pbefg/) Taxis are part of the local public transit network here (and regulated by county officials). §13(4) is about when to grant new taxi licenses, incl. a pretty detailed set of things for officials to look out for. §13(5) is concerned with who is granted new licenses (established and new applicants, but folks need to be serious about running a taxi business; the latter precludes the 'on-and-off' Uber model), with an eye on avoiding concentration of power. These things (along with all the other rules for public transit in general and taxis in particular in that law) make sense when considering taxis to be part of public infrastructure that just has to work, and not some investors' toy. I can understand that investors and their minions running shops like Uber aren't happy about that, but luckily that was no concern when people wrote legislation on providing reliable infrastructure. Uber was particularly tone-deaf here when pushing their all-American pitch about how they're taking on some evil monopoly (when in a city of 200'000 people, there's not a single taxi company commanding 25 cars. Most have 5 or less).
drinchev 11y ago
Disclaimer : I live in Berlin and work in IT. The benefit that Uber gives me here in Berlin, for me, is really big : 1) Global usage ( I travel a lot around Europe and I can use the same app everywhere, no need to look for a local app ) 2) Using app that is potentially / economically better. I certainly expect less bugs than the other apps. 3) All english user interface for every country I go to and pay using the same credit card. 4) Rating drivers So ... IMHO The big potential of Uber is that it tries to solve the taxi problem everywhere. Just like booking.com for the whole world. Competitor solution for this problem is MyTaxi. It is popular in Berlin and I also used it in Lisbon last week.
- Nursie 11y ago
  I don't want to rate drivers and I think Uber's rating practices are basically evil. I can see the appeal in the global nature of the app, certainly.
  - chrisseaton 11y ago
    > I think Uber's rating practices are basically evil Wow that's strong. Can you explain further?
    - th0br0 11y ago
      Probably because you essentially rate a service without having a fixed rating scale. Rating _people_ is always purely subjective and therefore judgmental - yet this is what Uber wants you to do. (Leaving aside the potential economic impact of such ratings...)
      - chrisseaton 11y ago
        The scale thing is problematic. In practice I think on Uber 5 is 'service was fine' and anything less basically gets the driver fired. Nobody told me this though so I was rating drivers a 3 by default for a few months. Hopefully I didn't end anyone's career!
pjc50 11y ago
Just like Chehkov's "unhappy families are each unhappy in their own way", each city's taxis have their own local equilibrium of good or bad functioning. American cities stereotypically have areas where the taxis refuse to go; they have terrible public transport, so there is no competition and no alternative; and they have sprawl, so you can't just walk home. They also have strangely protectionist taxi companies in some places, often linked to permit sale schemes. Uber goes anywhere, offers much better customer service, and increases supply regardless of permits. You can order online and pay by credit card. But if your city doesn't have those problems, then Uber is not a good value proposition and it's just a question of convenience. Many local taxi organisations have already adapted to online ordering any paying by credit card.
raddad 11y ago
" and taking 20%?" Typical taxi here in the US, company takes 65% unless you rent your car from them, and I don't know how it works after that. Typical employment interview consists of "Is there a pulse? Yes? You are hired."
- Nursie 11y ago
  Maybe the company does take 65%, but they're taking 65% and keeping it in the local economy, not spiriting it away overseas via some tax-haven or other. That's the point I was making.

kuschku 11y ago

Previous discussion on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10830365

jagermo 11y ago

I never used Uber in Munich. It never really came up for me, mostly because of the excellent public transportation network. Because of the traffic, whenever possible I use the metro or the tram, busses if I have to. The few times I need a car, I just grab one from a carsharing service.

JoshTriplett 11y ago
For locals, absolutely agreed. However, for travelers, consider the relative ease of public transportation versus an Uber or similar, especially if you don't speak the native language. Public transportation systems can still potentially work if you've learned the system, have a guide, or have clear instructions and don't get lost. Without any of those, I personally find it a lot easier to take an Uber where you want to go than to work out how a local public transportation system works that I probably won't use again for years. At conferences where the organizers provide extremely clear directions for taking public transportation from the airport to the conference venue and back, I've used it. At any other conference, I generally take an Uber, unless the local city does the obnoxious thing and bans them from picking up at the airport. If some other service existed that worked consistently in every city, I'd try it.
- kuschku 11y ago
  I went a few weeks ago for the first time in my life to Hamburg. And I managed to figure out their transit system well enough to know how to get from where to where. There are plans, it’s simple. And especially the price difference – 6$ a day with transit, or 20$ for a dozen kilometers with taxi – is definitely worth it.

bitL 11y ago

Frankly, I don't see any appeal for Uber in Europe - here most Taxis can be called/booked online and dispatch a car to wherever you are within 5 minutes. I understand in the US this is difficult and is the main appeal of Uber. Here in Europe - well, we had this for around 15 years already, what's the point?

song 11y ago
I wish that were actually true in France and in Portugal...
jmspring 11y ago
It's an incredibly small niche, but for someone from the US traveling to Europe for business, Uber (and similar apps) are useful to remove the need for cash (i.e., use credit cards -- particularly corporate Amex) in booking a ride. I've used this in Paris and Munich in the last year.
- claudius 11y ago
  > useful to remove the need for cash (i.e., use credit cards -- particularly corporate Amex) in booking a ride. > I've used this in Paris and Munich in the last year. Did you manage in Munich without cash at all? My expectation would have been that you needed cash regardless to pay for (most) small things (coffee, bakeries etc. etc.). Credit or even debit card use is not very widespread, essentially the only time I use mine is at ATMs and to pay online for services that don’t support direct debit.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  There are still taxis in Europe in 2016 that don't take credit cards? I would have expected the opposite (lots of places don't take cash because of risks etc). If the taxis in your city don't take credit cards, or you can't book online, or there is no competition, then just petition your local authority to fix it before Uber comes along and "fixes" it.
- david-given 11y ago
  And removing the need for tipping, which is a nightmare for anyone who's not used to the local customs.

illumen 11y ago

There are better taxi apps, and ride sharing platforms in Germany too. Something the article willfully neglected to mention.

geff82 11y ago

You are also free to negociate your own fare. The Taxi to the airport costs 40€ at my place, but I get it for 25 by my local taxi driver, night and day. Uber was more expensive the single time I could legally use it.

harryf 11y ago

> Uber has also asked the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, to intervene, and an official European investigation into Germany’s ban on UberPop — along with similar rulings in France and Spain — is expected to be completed sometime this year. Will be interesting to see how this goes. Uber makes heavy use of lobbyists in the US [1]. Would the same work with the EU? [1] http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-has-a-huge-group-of-lobbyists-to-help-it-take-over-the-world-2014-12 http://uk.businessinsider.com/uber-has-a-huge-group-of-lobby...

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Let's hope not. Though if n=1 observation of how the local startup community in my city jumped forward to genuflect in front of Uber (and they have connections) means anything, I wouldn't be surprised. There are a lot of people who don't know or don't care about Uber's evil side.