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Why does Uber keep keep getting called a "ride share" service? Passengers don't share the ride with other customers. The driver wasn't already going in that di

Why does Uber keep keep getting called a "ride share" service? Passengers don't share the ride with other customers. The driver wasn't already going in that direction. It's just a simple transaction. I'm paying X dollars to someone to drive me to Y place. It's a cab with an app. Uber is "ride sharing" like hiring a carpenter is "hammer sharing."

jonknee 10y ago
Because for tax reasons Uber wants to make it very clear they aren't the ones with the vehicles. You're using (sharing?) the driver's vehicle.
- vkou 10y ago
  Many taxi drivers own their vehicle. (If you can afford it, it's often more profitable to do so, then to rent the cab from your company.)
  - akiselev 10y ago
    I don't believe the vast majority of taxi drivers own their vehicles because in most jurisdictions the cars are tied to a taxi medallion number and those are much more expensive. I.e. before Uber taxi medallions in NYC cost on the order of two to three hundred thousand dollars because of limited supply. More often than not, taxi cab owners have more than one medallion/car and rent those out to drivers. This was a great investment pre-ride sharing
    - vkou 10y ago
      Even in NYC, some drivers would own their medallions - many of them banked on being able to sell them when they retire.
ndirish1842 10y ago
> Passengers don't share the ride with other customers. This is no longer true with Uber Pool and Lyft Line
crdb 10y ago
> Passengers don't share the ride with other customers I beg to differ. I just took an UberX from Changi Airport to home, a 30 minute ride during which the driver took on and dropped off a total of 3 other passengers. The cost was about half the taxi rate.
- SilasX 10y ago
  Perhaps, but "sharing" would generally imply sharing with the driver not (just) the passengers -- they were going to X anyway, and shared the ride with you. Van services for the airport have existed for a long time, in which they do multiple stops for the different passengers, and yield the same cost-savings against taxis, but no one would call that ride-sharing.
  - crdb 10y ago
    I see it differently (and have used "true" ride sharing services in Europe, like Blablacar). There is spare capacity in cars on the road, if you fill it up, regardless of the dynamics of how it happens, it's ride sharing. I might be the one sharing my taxi ride, or it could be a driver going to work. In both cases, the effect is one less car on the road for that trip. Most importantly, in the Uber Pool case the car I've just ride-shared does not then go park in the centre of town and take up valuable space, it keeps moving. The problem with Blablacar-type apps is flexibility, unless you're doing a very common trip you'll find yourself having to be very flexible with hours and pickup and drop-off points. On the upside, it's much cheaper than alternatives especially for trip between cities. Uber's model of having drivers basically work at as close to full capacity as possible most of the time is excellent and a great way to reduce congestion at the heart of cities, or even just the demand for parking lots. Vans get us into the implementation, rather than the model. The model is that if there are spare seats they should be filled. The implementation is the type of car being used. I suspect that if vans were profitable for Uber Pooling they would be much more used by now, but the optimal size seems to be the family sedan or the small SUV, at least in Singapore. They might make more sense in frequent suburb -> CBD type trips where there is a lot of demand for the same trip at the same time, although in the situations where I've needed to do such a trip, there's always been frequent express buses or direct trains provided by the city (e.g. in Sydney from the North West suburbs to Darling Harbour).
SilasX 10y ago
I can't seem to find it, but IIRC Reuters(?) set a new policy to refer to it as ride-hailing and several publications followed along, for basically that reason.
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
Not really. The driver may or may not be going in the same direction and you are sharing their vehicle. Seems fine to me. Hammer sharing would imply one person out of two could work.
joosters 10y ago
It's because "sharing" sounds really good. Everyone knows that it is kind to share, so lots of companies try to stick the word on to their own business. I hate the way that any company with a vaguely peer-to-peer business model calls themselves 'sharing', or 'part of the sharing economy'. It's not just Uber. e.g. Zopa (a p2p loans company) describes itself as 'sharing', but it's a business where people lend money to others for a fee. AirBnB claims to be 'sharing', but at it's core, it is little more than a hotel booking system. Taskrabbit gets described as 'part of the sharing economy' but no-one is sharing anything, you are paying for workers to do chores. Since when has sharing involved making a profit by charging users?
- pm90 10y ago
  I had a similar thought when I saw a person working for a company called favor (https://favordelivery.com/ https://favordelivery.com/). The dictionary definition of favor: a kind or helpful act that you do for someone.
  - personlurking 10y ago
    unless one is a politician or a mobster, of course.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  In the mid 2000's, we were incentivized to call anything remotely possibly nanotechnology related "nano-XYZ". It lead to demonstrably better government grant success. The behavior isn't even limited to tech startups.
- quadrangle 10y ago
  To be fair, AirBnB has the premise of actual sharing, like I let you use my house when I'm away or stay in my guest room that I share with other people or use for myself at other times… AirBnB is also truly peer-to-peer, at least part of the time. In practice, some of AirBnB is like a hotel, but not all. In contrast, Uber is not like AirBnB. It sets the rates for drivers, requires certain cars, etc. If Uber really was like AirBnB overall, it'd be a different story.
Perceptes 10y ago
As others have pointed out, both Uber and Lyft do have services where you literally share a car with another customer. These services are used by many people. In addition, "ride sharing" also refers to the transportation itself as a shared resource, in the same way as a taxi, or even public transportation. With a system of shared transportation, not everyone needs their own vehicle which has significant financial/economic and environmental implications. tl;dr: Uber/Lyft are shared resources among people who may or may not actually be in the car together at the same time—and the resource they are sharing is transportation ("rides").
Frondo 10y ago
It's because the "sharing" economy is catchier than the "capitalists extracting value from the few remaining resources owned by the middle class" economy.
- nathanaldensr 10y ago
  That's exactly right. It's nothing more than an appeal to emotional, idealistic people--a distraction. Judging from some of the comments in this thread, it seems to be working quite well.
- bmmayer1 10y ago
  How about "the middle class recovering value from resources they have historically overspent on and were unable to monetize"?
orthoganol 10y ago
Because "taxi" is very bad branding. As a test, casually ask the young Uber driver in the Prius how he likes being a taxi driver. You might get some visceral reactions. If Uber were thought of as "taxi", things would start to unravel for them.

jonknee 10y ago

Because for tax reasons Uber wants to make it very clear they aren't the ones with the vehicles. You're using (sharing?) the driver's vehicle.

vkou 10y ago
Many taxi drivers own their vehicle. (If you can afford it, it's often more profitable to do so, then to rent the cab from your company.)
- akiselev 10y ago
  I don't believe the vast majority of taxi drivers own their vehicles because in most jurisdictions the cars are tied to a taxi medallion number and those are much more expensive. I.e. before Uber taxi medallions in NYC cost on the order of two to three hundred thousand dollars because of limited supply. More often than not, taxi cab owners have more than one medallion/car and rent those out to drivers. This was a great investment pre-ride sharing
  - vkou 10y ago
    Even in NYC, some drivers would own their medallions - many of them banked on being able to sell them when they retire.

ndirish1842 10y ago

> Passengers don't share the ride with other customers. This is no longer true with Uber Pool and Lyft Line

crdb 10y ago

> Passengers don't share the ride with other customers I beg to differ. I just took an UberX from Changi Airport to home, a 30 minute ride during which the driver took on and dropped off a total of 3 other passengers. The cost was about half the taxi rate.

SilasX 10y ago
Perhaps, but "sharing" would generally imply sharing with the driver not (just) the passengers -- they were going to X anyway, and shared the ride with you. Van services for the airport have existed for a long time, in which they do multiple stops for the different passengers, and yield the same cost-savings against taxis, but no one would call that ride-sharing.
- crdb 10y ago
  I see it differently (and have used "true" ride sharing services in Europe, like Blablacar). There is spare capacity in cars on the road, if you fill it up, regardless of the dynamics of how it happens, it's ride sharing. I might be the one sharing my taxi ride, or it could be a driver going to work. In both cases, the effect is one less car on the road for that trip. Most importantly, in the Uber Pool case the car I've just ride-shared does not then go park in the centre of town and take up valuable space, it keeps moving. The problem with Blablacar-type apps is flexibility, unless you're doing a very common trip you'll find yourself having to be very flexible with hours and pickup and drop-off points. On the upside, it's much cheaper than alternatives especially for trip between cities. Uber's model of having drivers basically work at as close to full capacity as possible most of the time is excellent and a great way to reduce congestion at the heart of cities, or even just the demand for parking lots. Vans get us into the implementation, rather than the model. The model is that if there are spare seats they should be filled. The implementation is the type of car being used. I suspect that if vans were profitable for Uber Pooling they would be much more used by now, but the optimal size seems to be the family sedan or the small SUV, at least in Singapore. They might make more sense in frequent suburb -> CBD type trips where there is a lot of demand for the same trip at the same time, although in the situations where I've needed to do such a trip, there's always been frequent express buses or direct trains provided by the city (e.g. in Sydney from the North West suburbs to Darling Harbour).

SilasX 10y ago

I can't seem to find it, but IIRC Reuters(?) set a new policy to refer to it as ride-hailing and several publications followed along, for basically that reason.

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

Not really. The driver may or may not be going in the same direction and you are sharing their vehicle. Seems fine to me. Hammer sharing would imply one person out of two could work.

joosters 10y ago

It's because "sharing" sounds really good. Everyone knows that it is kind to share, so lots of companies try to stick the word on to their own business. I hate the way that any company with a vaguely peer-to-peer business model calls themselves 'sharing', or 'part of the sharing economy'. It's not just Uber. e.g. Zopa (a p2p loans company) describes itself as 'sharing', but it's a business where people lend money to others for a fee. AirBnB claims to be 'sharing', but at it's core, it is little more than a hotel booking system. Taskrabbit gets described as 'part of the sharing economy' but no-one is sharing anything, you are paying for workers to do chores. Since when has sharing involved making a profit by charging users?

pm90 10y ago
I had a similar thought when I saw a person working for a company called favor (https://favordelivery.com/ https://favordelivery.com/). The dictionary definition of favor: a kind or helpful act that you do for someone.
- personlurking 10y ago
  unless one is a politician or a mobster, of course.
hkmurakami 10y ago
In the mid 2000's, we were incentivized to call anything remotely possibly nanotechnology related "nano-XYZ". It lead to demonstrably better government grant success. The behavior isn't even limited to tech startups.
quadrangle 10y ago
To be fair, AirBnB has the premise of actual sharing, like I let you use my house when I'm away or stay in my guest room that I share with other people or use for myself at other times… AirBnB is also truly peer-to-peer, at least part of the time. In practice, some of AirBnB is like a hotel, but not all. In contrast, Uber is not like AirBnB. It sets the rates for drivers, requires certain cars, etc. If Uber really was like AirBnB overall, it'd be a different story.

Perceptes 10y ago

As others have pointed out, both Uber and Lyft do have services where you literally share a car with another customer. These services are used by many people. In addition, "ride sharing" also refers to the transportation itself as a shared resource, in the same way as a taxi, or even public transportation. With a system of shared transportation, not everyone needs their own vehicle which has significant financial/economic and environmental implications. tl;dr: Uber/Lyft are shared resources among people who may or may not actually be in the car together at the same time—and the resource they are sharing is transportation ("rides").

Frondo 10y ago

It's because the "sharing" economy is catchier than the "capitalists extracting value from the few remaining resources owned by the middle class" economy.

nathanaldensr 10y ago
That's exactly right. It's nothing more than an appeal to emotional, idealistic people--a distraction. Judging from some of the comments in this thread, it seems to be working quite well.
bmmayer1 10y ago
How about "the middle class recovering value from resources they have historically overspent on and were unable to monetize"?

orthoganol 10y ago

Because "taxi" is very bad branding. As a test, casually ask the young Uber driver in the Prius how he likes being a taxi driver. You might get some visceral reactions. If Uber were thought of as "taxi", things would start to unravel for them.