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Uber49 posts

Uber is an American venture-funded transportation company that enables people to use their smartphones to get a ride. The pricing system is similar to metered taxis, although it varies according to type of vehicle. App users enter their credit card information just once. For each ride the fare is calculated by time unless the vehicle’s speed breaks 11 mph, at which point it’s based upon distance. The fare, without a tip, is automatically billed at the end of the ride. Customers may choose to tip in cash, and they also can rate their driver through the app. The company arranges pickups in many cities around the world.

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Jan 2010

New York test run

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The Company does its first test run in New York with three cars cruising the SOHO/Chelsea/Union Square areas and a few people using the system. The core crew is Garrett, Kalanick, and Salazar, Garrett’s friend from Grad school who helped build the prototype in early 2009.

20 Jun, 2012

Uber vs HailoCab

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Arrington moderates a debate at LeWeb London between Kalanick and Pishevar of Uber and Valkin and Bregman from the London-based HailoCab app, including on market strategies and legal restrictions. Arrington:

Hailo’s clearly just a cheap knockoff.

Pishevar explains that HailoCab deals only with licensed cabs, and started on Nov. 1, 2011. He says passengers have already booked more than a million miles on London black cabs.

Team Uber vs. Team Hailo - LeWeb London 2012

4 Mar, 2014

Launch Festival interview

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Calcanis and Kalanick have their first interview in four years, talking about Uber’s expansion plans, and a new feature of a push notification to let customers know when surge pricing periods are about to end. Kalanick says Uber now provides more than half the total rides in San Francisco, although he doesn’t give specific numbers. Kalanick talks about being an entrepreneur:

You’re afraid of failure, you do the best you can, but you really need to have the perseverance, the stamina, the hard core, to just make it through

Uber's Travis Kalanick and Jason Calacanis at LAUNCH Festival 2014

30 Apr, 2014

Queensland: Uber illegal

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The state government is the second in Australia to rule that Uber doesn’t currently adhere to state laws. Transport Minister Scott Emerson:

The department is working with Uber to outline what safety regulations it needs to meet in order to operate in Queensland, including driver authorisation, which includes detailed criminal history checks, vehicle standards and taxi licences.

State Premier Campbell Newman:

I do have some concerns over the whole thing. I’ve got daughters, 19 and 21, I would prefer them catching a cab because I know about all the safeguards, cameras, trained drivers, GPS locations of cabs real-time. Yes, [Uber] has safeguards in there as well, but I’d prefer to use a ridgy-didge cab.

New South Wales: Ridesharing is illegal

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Australia’s biggest state by population declares that ridesharing apps contravene the Passenger Transport Act. Uber has been testing Uber X in Sydney for a few weeks at the time of the announcement. State transport department:

The law is clear and has not changed: if a NSW driver is taking paying members of the public as passengers, the driver and the vehicle must operate in accordance with the Passenger Transport Act

26 Jul, 2014

‘Civil disobedience’ in Western Australia

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Uber acknowledges that it is ‘not respecting [a] law’ in WA that requires small charter ­vehicle (SCVs) drivers to charge a minimum $60 fare. The company’s Asia-Pacific managing director Mike Brown says the company is an intermediary like eBay connecting people to a service, and describes how it sees the disregarding of the transport regulation:

Civil disobedience.

State Transport Minister Dean Nalder says the department tried to work with Uber but the company has decided to go it alone:

I can see the positives of the app, but there is a huge marketing effort behind the company, it’s a little bit overrated and can be easily replicated.

He warns Uber drivers — known as ‘partners’ — that they can be fined $2,000 and stripped of their driver’s licence if they don’t obey the minimum fare rule.

28 Jul, 2014

Bear case for Uber

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Forbes lays out the bear case for Uber, noting its recent valuation of $18.2 billion per its $1.2 billion funding round makes it bigger than United Airlines and Hertz:

A world with less pollution and no traffic jams, where taxis are cheap and safe and you never have to wait for a pickup: It’s a rosy vision Uber is peddling, and venture capitalists, those professional optimists, are fully on board.

Several finance experts see those valuations as inflated and say the service could easily lose ground to competitors given low barriers to entry:

The scenario implied by Uber’s valuation is only one way things could break.

Regulators could restrict the company and cities could ban it outright, while black swan events like a driverless car or non-profit collective could pose challenges down the road.

22 Aug, 2014

South Australia rules Uber illegal

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The South Australian state government says the ridesharing service is illegal and its drivers should expect to be fined. State Treasurer to Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio:

People get into taxis and hire cars late at night, they may have had a bit to drink (or) they may have had a very, very big night. It’s a very dangerous option to take an Uber service – you don’t know who’s driving the car. You don’t know if the car has been checked and, most importantly, we can’t know when you got into that car and where you got out of that car or where you were meant to go.

The comments come three days after Uber held its launch party in the state, with the captians of the Adelaide and Port Adelaide Australian Football teams sharing the first ride.

8 Sep, 2014

Uber interview

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Arrington and Kalanick talk onstage at Disrupt San Francisco about Uber’s scrappy reputation, global growth, and Plouffe’s role as campaign manager. Arrington:

A guy like you shouldn’t even have a car.

Kalanick:

I haven’t driven in a while.

Michael Arrington in Conversation with Uber's Travis Kalanick | Disrupt SF 2014

12 Oct, 2014

To pay traffic fines for Western Australian drivers

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Uber says it will pay any fines incurred by UberX drivers ruled to be operating illegally in the Western Australian capital city of Perth. Uber W.A. state general manager Simon Rossi:

As Uber has done and always will, we stand behind our drivers 100 per cent.

The company also has apparently banned State transport officials from using the smartphone app to prevent them from detecting drivers. Asked if it had black-listed the inspectors, Rossi:

Due to Uber’s privacy policy, I’m unable to really discuss or disclose personal information about any rider or driver accounts. However, what I can say is that, yes, riders from time to time may be restricted from the platform for any type of inappropriate activity.

23 Oct, 2014

Uber driver among four being monitored

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New York state officials are monitoring four people who had contact with Spencer. His fiancee and two friends are healthy but have been quarantined. The fourth person is who is in contact with the state is the driver of an Uber car that Spencer took when he bowling Wednesday night in Williamsburg. The driver had no direct contact with Spencer, and is not believed to be in any danger.

Flu shots on demand

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Uber and Harvard Medical School’s Vaccine Finder program test an on-demand flu shot service. From 10am-3pm E.T. Uber drivers will drive a registered nurse to deliver and inject the shot to customers anywhere within the three test cities of New York, Boston, and Washington. A registered meeting place must be set up with the nurse. No insurance card is required. Harvard professor John Brownstein, who pitched the program to Uber:

[It has] huge potential [to] deliver more convenience into delivery of care.

He says it can also provide a precedent for crisis situations:

[You] don’t necessarily want people crowding and traversing cities to get access to vaccines.

4 Nov, 2014

Subprime loans report

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Nitasha Tiku of Gawker sister site Valleywag publishes a 3,000-word article on alleged subprime car loans are being pushed through Uber’s Vehicle Financing Program. Uber marketing material:

Even if you have bad credit or no credit at all, we can help you get behind the wheel in a week . . . The down payment is as little as a few weeks of earnings on Uber and you’ll have access to serious savings . . . We’ve created a program designed for those with poor credit.

While Toyota and General Motors are among those partnering on the financing service a major point of controversy is apparently the participation by financing provider Santander. Among news articles, comments from forums devoted to Uber drivers, an Uber sub-Reddit, and direct interviews with drivers, she quotes Youtube user UberMan, who publishes information for ridesharing drivers:

You get this nice little email from Uber saying, ‘Guess what, you are approved for our special financing’ […] Stay away. Delete the email, you don’t need to read it. Don’t even log on, do not be enticed, do not get drawn in by their gimmicks, they make it sound great, but at the end of the day, they are screwing you over.

Lyft is reported to have started a program to get drivers to buy tricked-out Ford Explorers then canceled the program several months in, offering a rebate of $10,000 on a $37,500 truck.

17 Nov, 2014

Threatens Lacy

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Smith reports that, at a dinner at Manhattan’s Waverly Inn, hosted by Iam Osborne, and  attended by Edward Norton and publisher Arianna Huffington, Michael outlines the notion of spending “a million dollars” to hire four top opposition researchers and four journalists. That team could, he said, help Uber fight back against the press:

[they’d look into] your personal lives, your families,” and give the media a taste of its own medicine.

Michael expresses outrage at Lacy, who had recently accused Uber of “sexism and misogyny,” and who had wrote of deleting her Uber app after the company hired french prostitutes to promote its service in France.

At the dinner, Michael expressed outrage at Lacy’s column and said that women are far more likely to get assaulted by taxi drivers than Uber drivers. He said that he thought Lacy should be held “personally responsible” for any woman who followed her lead in deleting Uber and was then sexually assaulted. Then he returned to the opposition research plan. Uber’s dirt-diggers, Michael said, could expose Lacy. They could, in particular, prove a particular and very specific claim about her personal life. Michael at no point suggested that Uber has actually hired opposition researchers, or that it plans to. He cast it as something that would make sense, that the company would be justified in doing.

In a statement through Uber Monday evening, Michael says he regretted them and that they didn’t reflect his or the company’s views.

The remarks attributed to me at a private dinner — borne out of frustration during an informal debate over what I feel is sensationalistic media coverage of the company I am proud to work for — do not reflect my actual views and have no relation to the company’s views or approach. They were wrong no matter the circumstance and I regret them.

Responds to Uber threat

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Lacy responds to Michael’s comments:

No, these new attacks threatened to hit at my only vulnerability. The only part of my life that I’d do anything to protect: My family and my children. In that moment outside an Indian restaurant in London, I stood numb listening to Smith asking me if I had a comment, and I thought of my kids. They were somewhere covered in kitten and dinosaur pajamas giggling and running through the house in a last ditch effort to fight bedtime. Maybe they were looking up at the moon, remembering how many times I’ve told them I’d always be somewhere looking at the same moon even if I couldn’t be there to rock them.

And criticizes the company culture.

And lest you think this was just a rogue actor and not part of the company’s game plan, let me remind you Kalanick telegraphed exactly this sort of thing when he sat on stage at the Code Conference last spring and said he was hiring political operatives whose job would be to “throw mud.” I naively thought he just meant Taxi companies. Let me also remind you: This is a company you trust with your personal safety every single time you use it. Let me also remind you: The executive in question has not been fired.

She lists the investors in Uber and says she will contact each of them directly.

19 Nov, 2014

Kalanick ‘has to go’

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In a Feacebook post, Scoble says Kalanick should resign:

When I first started work at Microsoft an exec pulled me aside and told me how I could get fired. Pissing off journalists and analysts were very high on the list. This is how culture gets translated.

It is why I now believe Travis Kalanick has to go. It is the only way to reboot the culture there and have Uber regain its loved status…This company has deeply wounded itself. The investors should insist that Travis go. Then it should repair its relationship with Sarah Lacy and it should be made clear that being anti journalist or anti woman will not be tolerated at all. This wound is a lot deeper than I thought and IS changing consumer behavior. Travis, if I were you I would resign and help your company heal.

Responds via Twitter

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Kalanick responds to the controversy over Michael’s comments in a series of tweets saying that the remarks were ‘terrible’ and don’t represent Uber’s views. He apologizes to Lacy, and says Michael should learn from his mistake.

20 Nov, 2014

Deck shows massive growth

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A leaked presentation shows strong growth and metrics, with San Francisco alone generating $18 million in December 2013. Annual run rate based on the December 2013 data indicates revenue of about $1 billion from its top five markets (NY City, D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles), and it had an $11 million day on Dec. 31 across 60 markets. Business Insider doesn’t say where it obtained the deck.

24 Nov, 2014

Bearded man arrests Uber drivers in Sydney

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Howarth, a hire car driver and former UK Riot Police officer recognizable for his long beard, has been making citizens arrests of UberX drivers across Sydney and has promised to arrest at least five a day. He says he uses ‘minimum required force’ that may include tactics such as wrist locks to ensure ‘immediate pain and compliance’. Video obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald shows that at one point he was confronted by O’Sullivan, Uber’s operations director for Australia, who he says located him by ‘listening in’ over the app when he booked an Uber X car to the Star Casino with the intention of making the arrest. An Australian Uber spokesman tells ninemsn that the cars don’t have listening devices and his claims bear ‘no relation to reality’. Spokesman:

Russell claims to represent a taxi industry that has not faced any competition in decades and, through its association with Mr Howarth, is now resorting to open intimidation and threats of force to those who dare to provide an alternative service

Howarth was previously an Uber X driver but says he left as the company is breaking the law and exploiting drivers:

I thought ‘I am not going to be a part of this lie’. Can you imagine if it happened in another regulated industry? If I said ‘I’m going to open an Uber-pub and sell $2 Coronas 24/7? I’d be amazed if the government allowed that to happen.

26 Nov, 2014

Taxi payments company says Uber is illegal

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Cabcharge, the main taxi payments provider in Australia, says Uber is illegal and possibly dangerous. Cabcharge official:

UberX ride sharing is dangerous, unsupervised and as the NSW government has said, illegal. [Australian state] governments need to do something about it [..] Uber is an offshore entity that does not pay any tax here. It also appears to facilitate tax avoidance.