September 9, 2014 • 50 mins
Uber is the new rival to traditional cabs - just summon an Uber car on your app and the fare automatically deducts from your account. No tipping, no crazy long wait and no hassle (in theory). So how does it work, and why do other cab companies hate it?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scott Benjamin and I'm Ben Boland. Ben,
I've got big news today and we didn't even talk
about what's that working? What? This is number six hundred.
This is number six hundred numbers the cars of the King,
(00:23):
I guess with you know the Elvis Presley cars number
five right before this, this is number sixth Well, hey, Nol,
can we get some fanfare sound effects from our super
producer Noel? Is there something right? Thank you so much
you want and thank you Scott, or thank everybody who's
uh stuck with the little show that could while we
(00:45):
were doing this. Thanks Ben, I appreciate and likewise, I
mean you and I have sat across each other six
hundred times now and done this show for you know what.
I guess it's been about eight year or something like that. Wow,
something like that. Yeah, it two thousand eight Teggs is
about six years. Man. It doesn't feel like we have
done six d it rent I I guess it just
(01:07):
it comes up sometimes when there are episodes that we
didn't remember that we've already done. You know, and it
comes back to you. But another big thing that's happened
recently is that you and I have a video series now,
oh absolutely, and you know recently, very recently it arrived
on the scene, I guess for on on the House
(01:28):
Stuff Works homepage. Yeah, ugging on up YouTube, I guess
we should say that the YouTube channel. And it's about
the one Chrysler Thunderbolt And it was our day at
the the dream Car exhibit at the High Museum of Art.
And you can expect a few more of these to
come out, you know, as time goes on. Thunderbolt wasn't
the only one that we shot. We did a few others,
(01:49):
and there's some surprises along the way, Yeah, which we
will not spoil. But we wanted to let you guys
know because a couple of people have probably been listening
and thinking, uh, Scott, then why are you guys talking
about your museum field trip? What of it? What's happening? Yes,
So check out the how Stuff Works YouTube channel and
you're gonna find it, as a matter of fact, right now,
(02:09):
you'll find it on top, but scroll down on the
on the side there and you'll find the Chrystal Thunderbolt.
And speaking of interesting finds, I've found some trivia today
that I thought might catch your interest. I did it
earlier at the sound check. I'm intrigued, all right. Uh good,
because if you're like I'm bored, dismissed, I wasn't listening
to your sound check. Oh man, are you serious? My
(02:30):
sound checks are hilarious, are pretty awesome. Alright. So, in
nineteen o seven, taximeters were equipped on the streets of
New York for the first time. There were sixty five
gas powered vehicles that had these taximeters. And these were
invented by a guy named Bill helm Brune a few
years earlier in so you guys know what a taximeter is.
(02:55):
It records the time, in the distance and how much
you charged me, bowl right. And taxis went on to
become a h an institution in New York, and a
very very difficult institution to break into because they got
that medallion system right, absolutely, And this is a big
time industry for New York. And and it's at the time,
(03:17):
I guess, kind of an exclusive thing, right because only
a few were allowed to have these medallions, right, nail
on the head. It's gotten to the point where a
taxi driver will rent a medallion, you know, for the
time to drive their taxi for shifts. So there are
people who are legally ostensibly taxi drivers, but all they
(03:38):
really do is own a medallion that they run out
to people so they can legally drive a taxi. And
we know that in other countries taxis work different ways,
their regulations all this other stuff. But we're only telling
you about taxis so we can tell you about the
new guys on the block, the new kids in town. Yeah,
(03:58):
I don't know if we can call them new kids
on the black at this point. I mean, they've been
around since what two thousand nine, early two thousand nine, Ben,
this company Uber is operating in forty five countries now,
forty five countries all over the world. And uh, and
they do have quite a bit of controversy that goes
along with the service whenever it enters a new market.
So alright, so two thousand nine San Francisco. Now it's
(04:21):
in forty plus countries. But Scott, what what exactly is Uber?
I guess we should start from the inning, right, Okay?
So Uber is uh, Well, first of all, it's a
bold name for a company when you say because Uber
means supreme or you know, the ultimate of something. Right.
But but this is a an on demand car service
that UM sometimes uses what almost exclusively uses private drivers.
(04:45):
They're dispatched through a smartphone app, either on your Android
or iPhone and UM it's just a way that you
can summon un uber taxi. I guess if you want
to call it a taxi. UM. In some cases it is,
some cases it isn't. We'll talk about that. But you
can summon them at will, and you know, you just
wait for the exact vehicle that you ordered to show
(05:06):
up and it takes you to wherever you want to go.
And we'll describe this in more detail later on. But
it's a really interesting idea because it's not a ride share,
it's not a cab service. It's kind of something in between.
It's it's it's a taxi style car service, but it's
not exactly a taxi, right. And although you might see
a limousine license plate on an Uber UH, it doesn't
(05:27):
have the same cost that we usually associate with, you know,
renting a limousine for prom or for I don't know
why people rent limousines its parties. It's in a different
entirely different process. Really. I mean, if you're talking about
just taking the smartphone out of your pocket and ordering
a car to arrive on the on the curb side
in ten minutes or five minutes, or you know, however
(05:47):
close they happen to be, it's completely different from the
the I guess, the older way of doing this, where
you would call a month ahead of time and say,
you know, I've got problems coming up. I need this
vehicle on Friday night between six pm at midnight, or
you know, you would schedule this way way in advance
and then just hope that he shows up, the driver
shows up on time, you know, because I've heard stories
(06:08):
where it happens where they don't. But most cases it
works at just fine. But that's the old way of
doing things compared to, uh, this new way. Now. A
couple of young guys are in charge of this. Really
actually one young guy. I don't know how old these
second guy is. I didn't really look up the information
on him. But the guy that founded this whole thing,
Travis cal Nick, I believe his name. He's the founder
and CEO. And then there's another guy with him, Garrett
(06:30):
Camp And I'm not sure all the details about Garrett Camp.
Garrett Camp is pretty well known startup guy nowadays because
he is one of the co founders of something called
stumble Upon. Yeah, Canadian entrepreneur, right, yes, yes, sir, and
Travis also co founded some stuff beforehand, right yeah, Red
Swoosh was that with his company. It was a file
(06:50):
sharing company. And this guy right now, he's only thirty
eight years old. So that's what I mean. He's a
relatively young guy. I'm getting into this whole thing, and
I'll tell you Ben, he's very success us well, because
the current value of Uber is around seventeen billion dollars.
That's billion with a B. That is crazy and uh,
that is a precipitous rise. We we should also mention
(07:15):
that one important difference between Uber and a taxi is
that in a taxi you may negotiate prices, you may
need to tip. Uh. A lot of taxis, at least
here in Atlanta will do a relatively irritating thing, um,
which I totally understand. And and here's how it works.
(07:35):
You'll go into a taxi in Atlanta. You'll say, Okay,
I'm at point A. I need to get to point B.
They'll say, all right, they turn on the meter and driving,
you get to point B and you want to pay,
and you say, okay, here's my card and they say, oh,
the card machines not working. I'm air quoting right now,
(07:55):
because they don't want to use a card because the
SEE company itself will pass the charge of using your
card onto the driver or they take a percentage. Right. Yeah,
I'm just saying the card machine is not broken. Oh
you know what, I've had this happen so many times
that that I can't even count that. You know, I've
been prepared to pay with a credit card and you're
(08:17):
scrambling for cash. Yeah, And I totally understand that it's
the company coming down on the driver, and I get it,
but just tell me that. Don't tell me the card
machine is broken. Yeah, because it's right there on the
door that you know they accept credit cards, and so
I almost have to ask that before you even step
into the vehicle if they're going to accept it, and
they kind of begrudgingly do that, right. All right. So
(08:39):
the good thing about this, or one of the many
good things about this service, is that no cash exchanges
hands between the passenger and the driver unless you specifically
want that to happen. If you want to cash tip somebody,
that's possible, but it's not necessary in all cases because
sometimes there's a tip added on. Sometimes you have the
availability to tip tip through your smartphone through the service. Um.
(09:01):
You know, it's just a much better way to handle this. So, um,
I don't know, you don't have to worry about, you know,
having that extra cash on hand at all times. You know,
you can just know that it's covered. You've got this
account that's already set up, you know ahead of time
that you've already signed up for, registered for, and it's
and it's handled, which is so convenient, right in theory,
(09:21):
in theory, Scott, that's amazing. All right, Now, you have
used Uber on several occasions, right, yep, I've never used Uber,
so so school me a little bit and how this
whole thing works if you wouldn't mind. Oh yeah, yeah,
maybe right from the beginning, I mean right from where
you go to uber dot com. Right, you can go
to Uber dot com on a laptop or desktop, or
(09:42):
you can't do what I did, which is download the
app and create an account directly from there. Uh, Scott.
The first time I used Uber, I was actually in
San Francisco, and I was getting a little desperate because
it was getting late and it was not I wasn't
in a bad area of town, but I was in
area of town that was a little bit further away
(10:03):
from a train station than was walkable, and where there
weren't a lot of taxis, so unfamiliar territory for one thing,
and you're just unsure of you know what vekic you're
gonna get into. You don't have no idea you know where?
Am I exactly right? So um, you know, it seems
like a logical thing to do, and you thought, hey,
while this, go here and create an account or have
you already created a note that I I said, Well, I, uh,
(10:26):
while I'm waiting on the off chance the taxi comes by,
I've got enough time. So I entered the information in
on my phone. And so when I pulled up the application,
what I found was a really easy to use interface
where it shows a map. You have to have your
location services turned on, you know, and so it shows
(10:48):
a map and you pick where you want to go.
Based on where you are, it can give you a quote.
You can request a quote to get an idea of
how much you'll be charged. That's very nice, because I
don't know how how many times I've been at someplace,
you know, like a hotel somewhere like out in Vegas maybe,
and you ask the bellhop like roughly, how much should
(11:08):
it be to get down to Caesar's Palace? And yeah,
you know, just give me a ballpark idea, so I'm
not completely you know, raked over the coals when I
get there, because you know, what should be a forty
dollar fair ends up being sixty dollars. You know that
that shouldn't happen. So you get and like a head's
up on what it should be once you're there, right, right,
So I've pulled up this app just for just for
(11:29):
a demonstration here, and you see, right when you open it,
you've got your set pick up location and you can
move this little pin around wherever you want to go
by moving the map carefully. You don't want to driver
showing up to the front of the building here, right, Yeah,
let's go to a woodstock just in case. And uh,
once you do, once you set that location, then it
(11:52):
will give you an estimate of how long it takes,
and it will also let you know you see these
little car icons. These are all cars that can be
at that location, all right. So so there's a number
of vehicles right in our area right now. And I
would think that out of the fourty five countries and
just what a hundred cities in the US alone, Um,
(12:13):
in the U s alone, there's a hundred cities that
are using this. So you know, if you call up
this app and you figure out where all the vehicles
are around you, I bet you there's two or three
vehicles you know, within a mile of you at any
given time, probably within those cities, and you can find
the list at uber dot com. You know exactly you
know where this this thing is active. I guess maybe
in a lot of cases. Oh wait, WI should we
(12:33):
go next? And well, you know what, I want to
just make one quick mention of this. When you when
you create an account, there's gonna be some information that
they ask you, and I just don't want people to
be surprised by what they're asked. It should be like name, Uh,
of course, there's gonna be a um, you know, your
phone number, of course, your email, the language that you
prefer to use for the app, of course, and billion
information which requires a valid credit cards you have to
(12:56):
have a valid credit card on hand when you create
the account, and that will then be the card that
has built for all of your Uber transportation, right. Yeah,
so be very careful with that because we all know
that it's easy for some people to slide into habit
and not notice how much money they're spending. Yeah, exactly right.
(13:17):
So you got to review all the terms and conditions
and all that, which is all pretty much standard really.
I mean, you just check that, make sure that you
know all that you know something you agree to, and
then confirm the creation of your account and you'll get
an email that says you're an active Uber user or
something like that. Right. Um, and you've already mentioned downloading
the Uber app. Um, you have to sign in using
your user name and password every time you use it, right,
(13:39):
so that someone can't just pick up your phone and
order a car charge it to your you know what,
that's a good question. It's kind of a like a
password security thing, right. Uh. Yeah, I hope. So that's
a good question though, because when I just pulled it
up right now, you know, I had installed the latest
update and it went right to Atlanta. That's a bit dangerous. Yeah,
I should be more careful and my phone. It's just
(14:01):
a word of caution to listeners. But you know, once
you get to where you had just talked about, you know,
when we can see all the vehicles you've already entered,
where you are, where you're gonna go to. You've got
a variety of choices. Right, you don't have to just
take you know, the closest vehicle, right, right, yes, Uh,
there is a rating system for Uber drivers. Right. You
can also request some preferences. You know. There are several
(14:24):
different tiers of Uber. I think they're five. I have
five listed here now there's probably more at this point,
because I think this thing is updated all time. It
depends on where you're listening to us. If you're another
country listening to us, they have different options, as we're
gonna find out when we talk about Germany later. But
here in the United States, this is kind of the
way it's laid out, and there are five choices. There's
the Black car Service, there's the taxi service, uber x
(14:48):
and suv service, and what they call a l u
X or luxury service. Now, the black car service that's
kind of the original Uber service, and that's a typically
a high end Sedan. You can carry up to four
riders in this car, so that makes sense, right, I mean,
it's a great big luxury car that shows up. It's
kind of like you know the Lincoln town Car exactly,
you know Cadillac that shows up. But um, the next
(15:10):
one is taxi and this is actually this is weird.
This is a local taxi service that has an agreement
with Uber. So you are actually calling a taxi, but
you're not paying the taxi rate. It's it's different. It's
an rate exactly right. You will you will pay through
the app. You don't pay the driver of the taxi
in this case, in this case, only when you use Uber.
So um, there's a little different rules to go along
(15:32):
with that. And I'll tell you about a tipping thing
that goes along with the taxi service in just a minute. Okay,
there's also uber x. This is relatively new, I believe, right. Yeah.
Uber x is a little bit more affordable, a little
bit less luxury, right yeah, because Uber is kind of
a I want to say, we can call it a
premium service. I guess definitely. I've got a nice stat here.
(15:55):
For a while. In d C, the price of an
Uber would be about fifty more than that of an
equivalent cab ride. Okay, so this is a this is
an alternative to uh, you know, having the Lincoln town Car,
the Cadillac or whatever, the mesury Sedani. This is a
this is where an everyday car comes and picks you up.
Now this sounds a little strange. We're talking about cars
(16:15):
like Priusts or maybe like a Nissan of some kind.
You know, it's uh, I'm just a hatchback maybe something
like that. Usually has four doors room for luggage because
they know that people are getting you know, to and
from the airport to and from um, you know, bus
stations or whatever wherever they need exactly. So, um, this
is like an alternative to the thing, and usually it
allows up to four riders. Again, it's a budget option,
(16:37):
and it's called different things in different places. I think
it's called uber pop in Germany, it's called uber x
in it in the United States, and definitely in Atlanta.
As a matter of fact, we pulled up the app
to check out a little bit of a demonstration there
for you. We also gotta pop up message that said, hey,
in Atlanta, we have a fifteen discount on uber x,
(16:59):
making it cheaper than average cabs in your area because
ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors. There is a war
going on for your cab fair. Absolutely, that's right. And
as a matter of fact, this has been the cause
of a few walkouts, a few um demonstrations, I guess
by taxi drivers. Isn't that right. There's been some some
(17:21):
taxi drivers that field it's not fair. You know, there's
there's opposition to Uber and them saying that it's not
fair that they are allowed to operate without the proper licensing.
So we said in nine seven we started having those
first taxi meters come out in New York. Well, let's
just fast forward to the Great Depression, when people are
trying to make money any way they can. So, if
(17:43):
you have a car, you're just trying to make that
car worthwhile. You want to make gas money, want to
make rent and food, maybe something nice for the kids
at Christmas. Right, So all these people who are flooding
into this unregulated cab market in New York City, UH
start what are called the fair wars. So people were
(18:04):
driving prices down, trying to form pricing cartels, UH to
maybe own some turf in the city. You know, like
tell those Long Island cab jerks to stay out of
our our turf. Right. And what this eventually led to
was something called the HAPs Act in seven, and that
(18:26):
goes back to that medallion system we were mentioning. It
limited the number of taxis to about thirteen thousand, five
hundred and sixties six ish. This is a bit of
a union hold on that city, right, Yes, I mean
that's kind of what this amounts to, right. I mean,
it's it's them saying grouping together and saying we want
to we want to have restrictions in place that allow
only us to operate in this vicinity, right right. So
(18:49):
the problem is with that regulation. A lot of people
who are for it say that it's necessary to restrict
this because cab drivers already make a little money and
if fair wars began again, then no one would really
win eventually. But most of these licenses or medallions, at
(19:09):
least in New York are owned by companies. Ah, yes, Bennett,
you know what, let me tell you that I've I've
been reading about some of the controversies or the opposition
to Uber along the way, and you know, over just
the last five years that they've been in operation, and
it's boy, there's a lot of regulatory opposition that's happening
in Australia and Canada and Poland, in Germany's will find
(19:32):
out the u K here in the United States, of course,
and just all over the place um and most of
this comes down to licensing. It's almost always licensing issues,
and the claims are that, you know, these Uber drivers
may leave the writers in a bad position if there's
ever an accident. Um You know that if there's an
accident that causes injury, the Uber drivers maybe aren't as
(19:54):
ensured as a as a big taxi corporation would be
because they have, you know, all the federal regulations that
are in play in the state and local regulations as well.
Maybe um Uber is not operating under the same set
of regulations. They may not hold the level of insurance
that they have that that the big companies have. It's
it's true what you say about regulations, because there's a
(20:14):
very interesting difference. Now. Opponents of Uber would call this
a loophole, right Advocates of Uber would say, it's legal.
What are you angry about? So Uber is regulated in
most places as a black car or livery service, and
(20:35):
that means to your point that Uber has less regulation
than a taxi cab would have. However, it's turning these services,
these relatively higher end services right into something that the
average person can get. It'll be expensive, but you can
get it, that's right, you know. And I want to
(20:57):
mention two more types of Uber vehicles as you're talking
about high end, and these are getting towards more the uh,
the the upper end of the scale here. So the
black car is already fairly expensive, taxis you know, as
you mentioned, a little cheaper I guess, right, and Uber
X is the budget Well, now we're getting into the
last two. And there's the suv service, which is a
(21:19):
significantly more expensive than the black car service. And this
is a large size suv that shows up to to
bring a large group you know, to and from the
airport to and from you know, whatever bar location they
want to go to the bachelor party exactly right, Yeah,
but it's a it's a much more expensive service. And
then there's the the ultimate high end I guess of Uber,
which is the luxury car service. Now, uh, this is
(21:42):
one that seats up to four people um against the
most expensive service available from them. But it's just a again,
a high end luxury sedan that comes and uh and
and caters you around in comfort and style. I filed
that one under don't just get me there, make me
look good on the way. That's true. Yeah, and a
lot of people that's that's very important. So you know,
(22:02):
of course they'll go for the luxury service. Maybe sometimes,
maybe not all the time. I don't know. It seems like, um,
you know, the average user would be more in the
black car taxi and Uber x area, occasionally the suv
and very rarely the luxury car service. Now let's go
ahead and talk about a few more of the pros
before we get to the con travers eyes. I'm sorry, man,
(22:27):
Oh yeah, I guess. But uh but here's one that
is that's pretty good about the system. So the drivers
who work for Uber prefer it often to working for
a cab because or even a black car service because
they don't have to pay kickbacks to dispatchers. Uh. So,
(22:48):
one of the founders, kalin Nick, said, you need to
set it up so that drivers make a lot of money.
Whenever we start in the city, we see mostly traffic
from drivers who are using us as a yield management system.
They're filling up a dead time and that predictable cash
flow allows them to expand their business and Uber, he
goes on to argue, also protects drivers from passengers because
(23:10):
you know, think about a tail as old as time
in the urban environment, somebody jumps out of the taxi
tries to run away without paying, right, exactly right now
you're talking about protects them from you know, lost fair
But there's also another kind of another layer of protection.
I guess if you want to call it this. Now,
someone could create a fake account, but you know who
(23:33):
is arriving to pick you up, right, You get a
profile of the driver, You get a profile of the
vehicle that's coming, right, I'll tell you that the license
plate even I think of the type of vehicle that's
coming and a picture of the driver. But it also
tells the driver who they're picking up. There's a um
I guess the way that the driver can see the
passengers as well, at least the person that ordered the
(23:54):
vehicle a two way rating system exactly right. So there's
a little bit more security in that than just picking
up anybody off the street, you know, I mean, it's
kind of the same thing again and that you know,
somebody could gain the system. I guess, you know they could.
They could set up a fake account and go to
a lot of trouble to do that. However, you know,
they still have to have a valid credit card. There's
some way to track who that person was and uh.
And that's just a little bit more safety than just
(24:15):
picking up again, anybody on the curb side, you know,
at two am after cars closed down, and guess. And
to show how much time and thought Uber is putting
into its drivers, there's a there's a neat thing that
a lot of people might not know. Uh. Uber didn't
just help drivers find fares. Uh. They lined up two
(24:40):
point five billion dollars in financing to give low interest
car loans to Uber x drivers. Very nice. So that
means up to two thousand drivers by cars at low
interest rates under the condition that they used the cars
for Uber during the duration of the loan. You know what,
now we haven't even talked about this, but I want to.
I want to bring this up right now, is that
(25:02):
it's possible for I don't know you and I to
be an Uber driver if we wanted to write and
you can do that through the websites. You can go
there and apply to be a driver. And really the
application process, I don't think it's terribly difficult. You you
have to prove who you are, prove your driving record
is good, you know, make sure that your your license
is on record and exactly exactly right in your vehicle
(25:26):
is is roadworthy, and you know, all the stuff that
you have to do normally to get a job like this.
You know, a taxi type service, but you don't have
to be part of a taxi union. You don't have
to be part of a a major taxi company in
your in your city. You just sign up on the
website and that's how you begin. So you can go
there and check it out and see exactly what's involved.
I haven't gone through the process of, you know, sign
(25:47):
up to be a driver. I'm afraid where that might
lead ben I might I might end up actually doing it, because, um,
it sounds like a way that you know, if you've
got you know, a date, let's see your student and
you've got class two days a week, three days a week,
and you've got the other two or three days free.
You may want to make a little cash on the side,
and you know, aside from the night job that you
normally do or whatever. Um, you could sign up to
(26:08):
be a driver and you kind of pick and choose
your hours. You decide when you're on the clock, when
you're off the clock, you know, as as much as
you want to drive as as much as you can make, right,
And they're of course going to have standards for the
type of car that is acceptable even for Uber X.
So for example, my car wouldn't work because it's a
coup and I'm not entirely sure of this been but
(26:30):
it may be a little bit too old as well.
And I think there's a model your consideration that has
to come in as well because of newer safety features
that you know have evolved over the past decade or so.
And you and I have both owned cars that are
about ten years old, and you know there's that advances
in that area, and they want to make sure that
their passengers are safe, right, and that makes sense. So
ultimately what Uber wants to do and the short term
(26:54):
is kill the taxi business. Yes, now, you know what
can I get? The one more thing? Because I I
keep looking at this note and I want to say it,
and I don't want to forget it before we if
we get I mentioned how you know the taxi services,
you're you're hiring an actual taxi when you when you
use Uber Taxi. Right, Yes, you're hiring an actual taxi,
but you're using the Uber rates and it's it's a
separate thing. You're paying via the smartphone and your credit card.
(27:17):
You're not really exchange in cash with the person. I
do want to point out though, and this is something
I mentioned earlier and I said, I get to it. Uh,
you're not paying cash again. The credit card is built directly.
But there is a tip that's added for the taxi
service automatically, and you know, and the thing is about tipping,
you know, that's kind of an unusual situation. I mean,
that's the only one that adds an automatic tip. It's
(27:40):
kind of up to you. It's your discretion if you
want to tip your Uber driver otherwise, because most don't
accept it. Here's um you can actually tip an Uber
X driver if you want as well. But the black car,
SUV and Limo drivers are not supposed to be tipped
in this case because they already have that built in.
There's a premium built into the price of the of
(28:00):
the ride so that you know when you're done, you're done.
You just hits you know, confirmed payment or whatever, and
it's and it's done, which is again so convenient, almost
dangerously so I I just I can see it getting
out of hand so easily I stopped myself. I had
to turn the dial down on my Uber use in Atlanta,
(28:22):
because it becomes easy, right yeah, yeah, And I have
a car, and it just became easier. You have your
own car, which sometimes you leave here, right and you'll
jump in an uber uber vehicle to get home. Right. Yeah.
I'll take the train from work and I'll go hang
out with friends or something, and then I'll either just
(28:42):
ride home with someone because I also live next to
another train station, and then just take the train back
to work in the morning, or I can just take
Uber and take it all the way, take it all
the way home, one step. It does seem awful easy,
and it does seem like, you know, once you have
this app available and it's something that you're accustomed to using,
(29:03):
and you know it's gonna work, and you know that
the billing is accurate and all that stuff, once you
become comfortable with it becomes something that you you would
use more frequently. I could understand that. And then you
got to really watch the credit card charges. You know
that I forgot to use it, you know, four times
last week. That's going to add up the the That
is one of the advantages slash dangers of Uber. But
(29:26):
but think about this. Let's say you're in a new
city and you'll say you're in you're traveling to New York,
and you're unfamiliar with the city. Now, maybe in the
New York isn't the best example. How about a smaller city.
Let's sayre in Philadelphia. All right, we're in Philly. You're
in Philly, and it's not much smaller, but it's smaller,
and uh, you know, you're just unfamiliar with exactly where
everything is, and you know you need to get to
a certain museum and you're at your hotel and you
(29:48):
don't know how where exactly to you know, hail a
cab or how that works there if it's easy or
if it's not easy, this is a simple way to
get around that. And if you know you're gonna go there,
even if you're from you know, some small town in
the Midwest that does not have UBER, you can sign
up for the Uber service, and then when you get
to Philadelphia, you have that available to you so that
you know, when you step out on the curb of
the hotel, you can order that Uber vehicle and you
(30:09):
know with confidence that you know this is the person
who's gonna pick me out. Here's a picture of the driver.
I know that that's who's coming and they're gonna be
here in three minutes because it's telling me and it'll
track the vehicle as it arrives, and they know who
they're picking up. It's all very it's all very simple,
very concise, very laid out for you, right, and Uber
is hoping that it's so much more simple, so much
(30:31):
more concise, so much more easily laid out than a cab.
And this goes back to one of the big controversies
that you know that we've been diplomatically talking about. But
let's go ahead and uh go international, let's go to
the cons. Not everyone is a fan of Uber, exactly right.
(30:55):
And you know we mentioned some some walkout some some
strikes that have been um you on record, especially in Europe. Yeah,
exactly right. And you know taxi drivers will will crowd
the city's you know, the streets and just get out
of the vehicles and standard just like a slowdown or
a work shutdown. I don't know what you would call that.
I guess when the when the taxi drivers just clog
up all traffic and refused to drive. So the recent
(31:18):
news out of Germany, ben is that Uber has been
banned across the entire country of Germany. Now okay, I understand,
you know that sounds pretty dramatic, right, I mean across
the entire country. This is no no longer able to happen. Well,
Uber uber Pop, I guess is what they call um,
the same service that we call uber x here in
the United States. You know the side you know, the
(31:39):
everyday car I guess you know the cars that you
and I could drive. All right, So Accord in Frankfurt
recently ruled, and I mean recently, like in September of
two thousand fourteen. They recently ruled that the firm lack
the necessary legal permits to operate under German law. So
again it's back to licensing. That's always the thing, right,
licensing regulations, uh red tape. Yeah, And they said that
(32:02):
they could face a fine if if the service continued,
and uh and the fine bend. The fine is huge. Now,
Taxi Deutsche Land suggested that Uber could face up to
a two hundred and fifty thousand euro fine per trip
if the American firm loses the case that they've got
against them. Now there's a court case, of course, brewing
is what I'm you know, getting at here. And Uber
(32:25):
spokesperson said that they're not going to suspend the service
and that the band was not enforceable, you know, while
this appeal process is ongoing, so it comes down to
a lot of legal back and forth. But you know,
here's you know, the Taxi Deutsche Land company saying, you know,
they're gonna face this tremendous fine if they operate in
our jurisdiction, you know, up to two fifty thousand euros
(32:46):
per trip, which is a huge, huge amount. That's you
know what that is. That's in US dollars three hundred
and twenty seven thousand, eight hundred and forty per trip.
What if if they if they violate this, but then
you know, the Uber spokesperson said, as now, we're not
going to suspend service. We're gonna carry on as usual
because we know we're right. You know, we've done it.
We we fought this fight in other cities across the world,
(33:10):
We're right. So they're gonna they're gonna battle Germany in
this in this whole thing, so you know, this whole
appeal process. Who knows how long that's gonna take. But
but watch for some Uber news coming out of Germany
pretty soon, because you know, the taxi drivers say it's
unfair competition because they have um far fewer regulatory restrictions.
They're they're placed upon Uber versus the taxi company, and
(33:34):
uh what I mean, there's a lot to say about that, right, yeah, yeah,
for sure. I mean alright, Ben, so I mentioned, you know,
regulations put in place, and you know that's very restrictive,
right yeah, all right, Well what do you think the
solution to that is? Maybe, uh, I don't know, smaller
as smaller government come on them. Well, you know, it's
funny because this has gone the fight about Uber and
(33:56):
the war between them and cab companies has gone to
the halls of Congress. You know, politicians, at least in
the United States, I don't know about where. You guys
are listening to this show, are taking up the flag
for or against Uber, or for I guess they're all
saying it's for something like for the taxi cab companies
or for Uber. People like Mark Rubio are big Uber fans.
(34:21):
I bet they are. Yeah, exactly right. And you know what,
just to just to underlying this point or underscore this
point that the spokesperson from the taxi Deutsche Land UH
says that this is a quote form of locust share
economy and they also call it anarchy capitalism that could
leave passengers exposed during an accident. Now that's where the
safety issue comes up, right, So they're they're they're major
(34:44):
claim here. I guess is you know not that that
it's competition and they're kind of undercutting the rates on them.
You know, they're they're getting more business. Uh, it's that
you know, it's it's a it's a passenger's safety issue,
Ben Oh right, Yeah, it's it's for safety. They're concerned
about the people, the children been they're concerned about of children, Scott, Well,
the children who are calling Uber seven to get a ride.
(35:06):
That's the teenagers, right. Who knows? Man Germany is a
crazy place, crazy cool, crazy cool. Yeah. I went to
Germany once and everybody in that country is way cooler
than me. You heard it here first. Yeah, I was
so impressed. Man, they got these doner kebabs. Okay, moving on,
I'm getting derailed. If you have had a donn you
(35:29):
know what I'm talking about. They're amazing and that's the
first thing to eight when I go back. But it
looks like I might have to grab a regular cab
from the airport, possibly because you know, Uber says that
you know, all rides and all travelers in those rides
are ensured. There's no there's no concern there. That's what
we're saying. They're saying this court case shouldn't go on
(35:49):
longer than one day, you know, like we're just come
in with the facts. It's done. That's why they're saying,
we're not going to suspend service. We know we're right
in the situation. We fought this fight. Here it is
again and when we know we're going to come out
victorias right. And it's in their f a Q. That's
how you know it's been an issue because they have
a section in their f a Q about that where
they talk about one million dollars of liability coverage per incident,
(36:14):
one million dollars of uninsured underinsured, bodily injury coverage fifty
thou dollars a contingent, comprehensive collision, no false coverage. They
they're saying that they have this stuff sealed up. Yeah,
and and by part of I mean I guess by extension,
the drivers that that drive for Uber are also insured.
(36:36):
So you know there's like another level of this. I
guess there's the company that's insured, right right, company insurance
on a vehicle that's used for Uber service, and then
the motorists and the driver has to be insured as well.
That's part of that whole sign up procedure. You know,
all the information that I was talking about before they
have to provide. Of course, you have to be insured.
Of course, you have to be insured to a certain
level and of a certain type. Right now, when we
(36:59):
get to the criticism regarding UM guarding regulations for drivers specifically,
we've already talked about the criticism, the level playing field,
criticism for cab companies versus Uber and whether or not
it's gonna work, And actually, can I sidebar for a
second here? Of course, I really enjoyed the episode we
(37:23):
did on the Knowledge Member with those black cab drivers.
I do Yeah, that was an intense test. Yeah. So
the knowledge is a test so intense. It's the test
every black cab driver has to take to drive in
the City of London. Um and London because there's a
place in London called the City of London, which isn't
(37:44):
necessarily London anyway, and cab drivers would know that, and
cab drivers would know all about that. So the knowledge
is a test that is so difficult that after you
have driven a cat most people fail it. And after
you have driven it have for a number of decades
parts of your brain change. They grow larger, the parts
(38:06):
of associated with spatial recognition and navigation and stuff. So
these guys in London at least have this wealth of knowledge.
And the argument on their side would be that an
Uber driver doesn't have that, they have a GPS right. Um,
But these industries, which are protected by government regulations, especially
(38:29):
in Europe, are coming head to head with Uber. But
Uber's first plan is to UH, is to take these
guys out, regardless of any criticisms around regulation. And in
New York, for example, they don't have to take a
(38:50):
crazy test like the knowledge, but you know, you have
to have a clean driving record, drug test, UH, sexual
harassment lessons, defensive driving course, all before you get in
the car for your first day of work. UH. The
question is whether or not Uber has the same level
of scrutiny for its drivers. And I have a story
for you to introduce us to more of these controversies.
(39:14):
So there is an article here about one lady's experience
with Uber and she was she lived near Lincoln Center
in New York City, right and was going across town
called the Uber and it was a regular trip. But
(39:34):
at the end of the ride, the Uber driver asked
her if she had been at Lincoln Center a few
hours earlier. She said she hadn't because she didn't remember
walking past there. He took out his iPad, Really, he asked,
because you look like this girl, and he turned the
iPad to face the back seat. She saw full length,
close up picture of herself wearing the workout clothes she
(39:55):
had had on an hour earlier. The driver asked if
she wanted him to send the pictures. She declined, and
you know, made like a banana and split. So she
gave it a one star review. UM. And then Uber
responded and and said, you know, we've turned this information
to our driver team. She complained to Uh, it's never
(40:19):
okay for a writer to feel uneasy. We'll do everything
we can to make this better. We know money can't
solve anything, but you know, here's twenty dollar credit. What
a creepy story. It doesn't end there because the driver
a few days later, UM apparently gets a message or
sends a message to this woman via an intermediary. And
(40:41):
the driver said, I need your help to get my
job back, UM and said, you've been driver for twenty
years and what had happened between him and the jogger
lady was a misunderstanding and Uber it immediately fired him,
he said, and uh, he didn't want to seem like
he's a bad guy or something. And then he sent
(41:03):
the email to the lady, the jogging lady at her
professional email address, and to her boss. So that's where
she found out that Uber gets more than the first
name of a writer. So be careful with your information.
That's the underlying Uh. I guess I guess a lesson
in this whole thing that you never know what someone's
(41:25):
gonna do with your personal information. But man, that's creepy,
isn't it. That's really weird And for him to contact
her the next day as well. Yeah, yeah, this is
I mean, and this is not to say that Uber
is bad or people are crazy, but this is also
not a commercial for Uber. We're talking about this company.
So these are these are the good and bad things
you need to know. Sure, yeah, I understand. And it
(41:48):
just seems like, you know, you mentioned that, you know
when I when I was asking you about your Uber
app and you pulled it up, that your information was
right there and available. It seems like somebody could grab
your phone use that to to you know, get across town,
you know, via your stolen phone. Wow, it would be
pretty easy, right, it's built your account. You can't really
prove it wasn't you unless the driver, you know, has
a photo of you and says that was not the
(42:10):
guy that I picked up about you know, we can
dispute this charge or whatever. I don't know if you
even do that. What a good action sequence for taking
three or something? You know, you need to get across town,
so you just grab a phone someone else's phone? Uber
across the subplot, there's one more thing. It's really interesting.
Is it cool if we go into this? Okay, so
(42:30):
there's another article that says Uber has a crazy plan,
the kind of thing that even Ellen Musk would call ambviciously. Ye,
killing the taxi business is just the first part. They
want to be the cheapest, best way to get around
all the major cities in the world. The medium objective
for Uber, according to this article, which is speculative, is
(42:53):
much broader, and it has to do with what tech
nerds call the death of the ownership society. So, uh,
there's one guy who already sold his three series BMW
because it was cheaper for him to use Uber where
he lived. Uh. The argument is that as Uber rides
become cheaper and cheaper, people will just not need to
(43:14):
own cars. That's their idea, and they want to partner
up with other non car companies. So why buy an
expensive grill for summer picnic? The article says, when for
forty dollars, Uber can deliver a grill in half an hour,
deliver a grill and you know, take it back. Oh
my gosh. This is kind of weird. So from there,
(43:36):
if step one is to take over taxi, step two
is to kill ownership, what if Uber starts using autonomous
vehicles In his defense, the guy also goes back and says,
you know, if this sounds fanciful, it's because it is.
But what if Uber becomes too two cabs and two
hired cars? What if it becomes the Google of that market.
(43:58):
Let me tell you something, because you're reminding me of
something that that I feel like we need to talk
about before we close out here. All right, So you
mentioned that, you know, bringing a grill to a summer
picnic or something like that. That sounds outlandish, right, but
listen to some of the Uber promotions that have happened
just recently. I mean, he's not long ago. Now. Remember
when you were a kid and you would just there
(44:18):
was really no rhyme or reason to whin the ice
cream truck would arrive, you know, sometimes it would sometimes
come by at this time. Sometimes it would come by
on the weekend, sometimes in the evening. You didn't exactly
right now, this one. You can summon the ice cream
truck to your location. So let's say you're at the
neighborhood pool and you decide you want an ice cream.
You can summon that that truck there and they'll come
(44:38):
to a specific place. And sometimes they even have packages
of ice cream products that they will offer to you
for a certain rate. Let's say that you are a
package of you know, I'm gonna at least order fifteen
of this type of item, So will you come here?
And they'll say, of course, we'll be there. It's not like,
you know, I just come here and we'll see what
kind of business we drum up. But in addition to whoever,
they just kind of get on the why you know,
(45:00):
whoever just also shows up, you have guaranteed that they're
gonna sell X number of snow cones or whatever they
happen to have. Right, so this ice cream truck thing
went over fairly well, I believe, And then they offered
a Back to the Future uh program or promotion where
I believe you could summon a DeLorean that looked like,
you know, the one out of Back to the Future.
(45:20):
What I think it did now the photo shows the
Delorum that looks like the back of the futures think
future thing. But I'm thinking that maybe it was just Deloreans.
So like if there was a DeLorean in the area,
they could they could have that arrived. I'm not sure
that was, you know, in every case, the one that
looked like the movie prop. All right, another one was
a helicopter service that you could order from New York
(45:41):
City to the Hampton's during the Fourth of July weekend.
That was like I want to say, that was like
three thousand dollars. It was one flat fee. Pretty expensive,
but not a bad way to arrive to the party, right, Yeah,
I think they can soak the cost. I think so too.
And then there's also a ferry service that was offered,
which is again kind of strange, you know, ferry service,
but that was offered during the two thousand thirteen bart strike,
(46:03):
which helped, you know, like handle the additional I guess
transit load that was necessary. Right, You could order a
ferry to come pick you up. And then this is
so weird. They had well, they had a Christmas tree
delivery service that I guess worked out fairly well for them.
They had a kitten delivery service. You could have a
kitten delivered to your location. Now, I think this is
only a couple of locations that was offered in um
(46:25):
I want to say, San Francisco, Seattle in New York City,
and it was like twenty dollars and they would they
would arrive with a kitten and you'd have like fifteen
minutes of playtime with the kittens, and they would bring
I think cupcakes and T shirts and things like that,
you know, like Uber t shirts. That's a very strange thing.
But you know, when you think of things like you
(46:46):
mentioned with the grill, you know, to the summer picnic,
it's not that farfetched to think that they could offer
something like this because they've already done it. I mean,
Amazon used to just sell books. That's a good point.
And most people, you know, I've had a lot of
people have ever ordered a book from Amazon. They probably
ordered every other thing besides the book, right, yeah, just
watch TV with it thru. But this, okay, this is
(47:08):
interesting because I don't know about you listeners, but this
is setting off all sorts of crazy science fiction red
flags in my head. You know, I I was about
to make a joke about renting a pet, and it
turns out they've already done it. It's true. So what
do you guys think is the future of uber now?
Of course, we didn't have time to squeeze in some
(47:30):
other vital information, such as the astonishing software they used
to distribute these calves and manage the logistics of this.
We also didn't talk about other similar companies like Lift
with a Y with competition to Uber. Yeah, Lift with
a Y like it's a metal band in the eighties.
(47:52):
But uh, but we would love to hear what you think,
and we hope that if you have not heard of Uber,
this is an interesting introduction. We are not in any
way paid or renumerated by Uber. As a matter of fact,
you heard me say earlier that I have really turned
down the Uber usage, that I've never used Uber, Right,
(48:12):
that's true. Uh, So we'd like to hear your stories.
We'd like to hear your experiences. I know that someone
out there who has used Uber, who's listening right now,
accidentally got in the wrong car because it happens. You know,
you're waiting for the Uber car and then another black
car pulls up and you just opened the handle punt. Yeah,
(48:34):
happen to me once, and it did really bad about
it was who's more shocked, you or the driver? Uh?
Probably the driver, because it was just some random JABRONI
running up to his car. Sure, he just made a mistake,
but yeah, he's dealing with a space violation. I mean
he you know, if somebody ran up to my car
(48:57):
and did that, his car was locked. But if someone
ran up to my car that fashion and open the
back door, I would assume a crime was about to
take place. Be terrifying, wouldn't it. Yeah, So apologies to you,
kindly stranger, and uh I did apologize. And whoever else
it happens to today, because it's going to happen at
some point today to somebody. Yeah, probably statistically, and let
(49:18):
us let us know what you think about this. So
you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where you
can also watch our first episode of our Dream Cars
video series. You can visit car stuff show dot com
for every single one of our six podcasts. And I
just have to say again, Scott, congratulations, thanks for keeping
(49:38):
me around for six hundred episodes. Likewise, been congratulations to you.
I mean I should thank you for for having me
for that long because you've been a great co host
and I really appreciate all the work you do to
put the show together. Checks man on the short round
to the Indiana now come on, so uh yes, yes,
(49:59):
it's one of buy many failings on to models that
here too much. I'm kidding. I am kidding, of course,
But if you want to be part of this, if
you want to help us with some new ideas for
upcoming shows, please do. Our best suggestions always come from
our listeners, and our email address is car stuff and
how stuff work dot com. For more on this and
(50:24):
thousands of other topics, is the how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think, send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com m
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house Stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
to the podcast. I'm Scott Benjamin and I'm Ben Boland. Ben,
I've got big news today and we didn't even talk
about what's that working? What? This is number six hundred.
This is number six hundred numbers the cars of the King,
(00:23):
I guess with you know the Elvis Presley cars number
five right before this, this is number sixth Well, hey, Nol,
can we get some fanfare sound effects from our super
producer Noel? Is there something right? Thank you so much
you want and thank you Scott, or thank everybody who's
uh stuck with the little show that could while we
(00:45):
were doing this. Thanks Ben, I appreciate and likewise, I
mean you and I have sat across each other six
hundred times now and done this show for you know what.
I guess it's been about eight year or something like that. Wow,
something like that. Yeah, it two thousand eight Teggs is
about six years. Man. It doesn't feel like we have
done six d it rent I I guess it just
(01:07):
it comes up sometimes when there are episodes that we
didn't remember that we've already done. You know, and it
comes back to you. But another big thing that's happened
recently is that you and I have a video series now,
oh absolutely, and you know recently, very recently it arrived
on the scene, I guess for on on the House
(01:28):
Stuff Works homepage. Yeah, ugging on up YouTube, I guess
we should say that the YouTube channel. And it's about
the one Chrysler Thunderbolt And it was our day at
the the dream Car exhibit at the High Museum of Art.
And you can expect a few more of these to
come out, you know, as time goes on. Thunderbolt wasn't
the only one that we shot. We did a few others,
(01:49):
and there's some surprises along the way, Yeah, which we
will not spoil. But we wanted to let you guys
know because a couple of people have probably been listening
and thinking, uh, Scott, then why are you guys talking
about your museum field trip? What of it? What's happening? Yes,
So check out the how Stuff Works YouTube channel and
you're gonna find it, as a matter of fact, right now,
(02:09):
you'll find it on top, but scroll down on the
on the side there and you'll find the Chrystal Thunderbolt.
And speaking of interesting finds, I've found some trivia today
that I thought might catch your interest. I did it
earlier at the sound check. I'm intrigued, all right. Uh good,
because if you're like I'm bored, dismissed, I wasn't listening
to your sound check. Oh man, are you serious? My
(02:30):
sound checks are hilarious, are pretty awesome. Alright. So, in
nineteen o seven, taximeters were equipped on the streets of
New York for the first time. There were sixty five
gas powered vehicles that had these taximeters. And these were
invented by a guy named Bill helm Brune a few
years earlier in so you guys know what a taximeter is.
(02:55):
It records the time, in the distance and how much
you charged me, bowl right. And taxis went on to
become a h an institution in New York, and a
very very difficult institution to break into because they got
that medallion system right, absolutely, And this is a big
time industry for New York. And and it's at the time,
(03:17):
I guess, kind of an exclusive thing, right because only
a few were allowed to have these medallions, right, nail
on the head. It's gotten to the point where a
taxi driver will rent a medallion, you know, for the
time to drive their taxi for shifts. So there are
people who are legally ostensibly taxi drivers, but all they
(03:38):
really do is own a medallion that they run out
to people so they can legally drive a taxi. And
we know that in other countries taxis work different ways,
their regulations all this other stuff. But we're only telling
you about taxis so we can tell you about the
new guys on the block, the new kids in town. Yeah,
(03:58):
I don't know if we can call them new kids
on the black at this point. I mean, they've been
around since what two thousand nine, early two thousand nine, Ben,
this company Uber is operating in forty five countries now,
forty five countries all over the world. And uh, and
they do have quite a bit of controversy that goes
along with the service whenever it enters a new market.
So alright, so two thousand nine San Francisco. Now it's
(04:21):
in forty plus countries. But Scott, what what exactly is Uber?
I guess we should start from the inning, right, Okay?
So Uber is uh, Well, first of all, it's a
bold name for a company when you say because Uber
means supreme or you know, the ultimate of something. Right.
But but this is a an on demand car service
that UM sometimes uses what almost exclusively uses private drivers.
(04:45):
They're dispatched through a smartphone app, either on your Android
or iPhone and UM it's just a way that you
can summon un uber taxi. I guess if you want
to call it a taxi. UM. In some cases it is,
some cases it isn't. We'll talk about that. But you
can summon them at will, and you know, you just
wait for the exact vehicle that you ordered to show
(05:06):
up and it takes you to wherever you want to go.
And we'll describe this in more detail later on. But
it's a really interesting idea because it's not a ride share,
it's not a cab service. It's kind of something in between.
It's it's it's a taxi style car service, but it's
not exactly a taxi, right. And although you might see
a limousine license plate on an Uber UH, it doesn't
(05:27):
have the same cost that we usually associate with, you know,
renting a limousine for prom or for I don't know
why people rent limousines its parties. It's in a different
entirely different process. Really. I mean, if you're talking about
just taking the smartphone out of your pocket and ordering
a car to arrive on the on the curb side
in ten minutes or five minutes, or you know, however
(05:47):
close they happen to be, it's completely different from the
the I guess, the older way of doing this, where
you would call a month ahead of time and say,
you know, I've got problems coming up. I need this
vehicle on Friday night between six pm at midnight, or
you know, you would schedule this way way in advance
and then just hope that he shows up, the driver
shows up on time, you know, because I've heard stories
(06:08):
where it happens where they don't. But most cases it
works at just fine. But that's the old way of
doing things compared to, uh, this new way. Now. A
couple of young guys are in charge of this. Really
actually one young guy. I don't know how old these
second guy is. I didn't really look up the information
on him. But the guy that founded this whole thing,
Travis cal Nick, I believe his name. He's the founder
and CEO. And then there's another guy with him, Garrett
(06:30):
Camp And I'm not sure all the details about Garrett Camp.
Garrett Camp is pretty well known startup guy nowadays because
he is one of the co founders of something called
stumble Upon. Yeah, Canadian entrepreneur, right, yes, yes, sir, and
Travis also co founded some stuff beforehand, right yeah, Red
Swoosh was that with his company. It was a file
(06:50):
sharing company. And this guy right now, he's only thirty
eight years old. So that's what I mean. He's a
relatively young guy. I'm getting into this whole thing, and
I'll tell you Ben, he's very success us well, because
the current value of Uber is around seventeen billion dollars.
That's billion with a B. That is crazy and uh,
that is a precipitous rise. We we should also mention
(07:15):
that one important difference between Uber and a taxi is
that in a taxi you may negotiate prices, you may
need to tip. Uh. A lot of taxis, at least
here in Atlanta will do a relatively irritating thing, um,
which I totally understand. And and here's how it works.
(07:35):
You'll go into a taxi in Atlanta. You'll say, Okay,
I'm at point A. I need to get to point B.
They'll say, all right, they turn on the meter and driving,
you get to point B and you want to pay,
and you say, okay, here's my card and they say, oh,
the card machines not working. I'm air quoting right now,
(07:55):
because they don't want to use a card because the
SEE company itself will pass the charge of using your
card onto the driver or they take a percentage. Right. Yeah,
I'm just saying the card machine is not broken. Oh
you know what, I've had this happen so many times
that that I can't even count that. You know, I've
been prepared to pay with a credit card and you're
(08:17):
scrambling for cash. Yeah, And I totally understand that it's
the company coming down on the driver, and I get it,
but just tell me that. Don't tell me the card
machine is broken. Yeah, because it's right there on the
door that you know they accept credit cards, and so
I almost have to ask that before you even step
into the vehicle if they're going to accept it, and
they kind of begrudgingly do that, right. All right. So
(08:39):
the good thing about this, or one of the many
good things about this service, is that no cash exchanges
hands between the passenger and the driver unless you specifically
want that to happen. If you want to cash tip somebody,
that's possible, but it's not necessary in all cases because
sometimes there's a tip added on. Sometimes you have the
availability to tip tip through your smartphone through the service. Um.
(09:01):
You know, it's just a much better way to handle this. So, um,
I don't know, you don't have to worry about, you know,
having that extra cash on hand at all times. You know,
you can just know that it's covered. You've got this
account that's already set up, you know ahead of time
that you've already signed up for, registered for, and it's
and it's handled, which is so convenient, right in theory,
(09:21):
in theory, Scott, that's amazing. All right, Now, you have
used Uber on several occasions, right, yep, I've never used Uber,
so so school me a little bit and how this
whole thing works if you wouldn't mind. Oh yeah, yeah,
maybe right from the beginning, I mean right from where
you go to uber dot com. Right, you can go
to Uber dot com on a laptop or desktop, or
(09:42):
you can't do what I did, which is download the
app and create an account directly from there. Uh, Scott.
The first time I used Uber, I was actually in
San Francisco, and I was getting a little desperate because
it was getting late and it was not I wasn't
in a bad area of town, but I was in
area of town that was a little bit further away
(10:03):
from a train station than was walkable, and where there
weren't a lot of taxis, so unfamiliar territory for one thing,
and you're just unsure of you know what vekic you're
gonna get into. You don't have no idea you know where?
Am I exactly right? So um, you know, it seems
like a logical thing to do, and you thought, hey,
while this, go here and create an account or have
you already created a note that I I said, Well, I, uh,
(10:26):
while I'm waiting on the off chance the taxi comes by,
I've got enough time. So I entered the information in
on my phone. And so when I pulled up the application,
what I found was a really easy to use interface
where it shows a map. You have to have your
location services turned on, you know, and so it shows
(10:48):
a map and you pick where you want to go.
Based on where you are, it can give you a quote.
You can request a quote to get an idea of
how much you'll be charged. That's very nice, because I
don't know how how many times I've been at someplace,
you know, like a hotel somewhere like out in Vegas maybe,
and you ask the bellhop like roughly, how much should
(11:08):
it be to get down to Caesar's Palace? And yeah,
you know, just give me a ballpark idea, so I'm
not completely you know, raked over the coals when I
get there, because you know, what should be a forty
dollar fair ends up being sixty dollars. You know that
that shouldn't happen. So you get and like a head's
up on what it should be once you're there, right, right,
So I've pulled up this app just for just for
(11:29):
a demonstration here, and you see, right when you open it,
you've got your set pick up location and you can
move this little pin around wherever you want to go
by moving the map carefully. You don't want to driver
showing up to the front of the building here, right, Yeah,
let's go to a woodstock just in case. And uh,
once you do, once you set that location, then it
(11:52):
will give you an estimate of how long it takes,
and it will also let you know you see these
little car icons. These are all cars that can be
at that location, all right. So so there's a number
of vehicles right in our area right now. And I
would think that out of the fourty five countries and
just what a hundred cities in the US alone, Um,
(12:13):
in the U s alone, there's a hundred cities that
are using this. So you know, if you call up
this app and you figure out where all the vehicles
are around you, I bet you there's two or three
vehicles you know, within a mile of you at any
given time, probably within those cities, and you can find
the list at uber dot com. You know exactly you
know where this this thing is active. I guess maybe
in a lot of cases. Oh wait, WI should we
(12:33):
go next? And well, you know what, I want to
just make one quick mention of this. When you when
you create an account, there's gonna be some information that
they ask you, and I just don't want people to
be surprised by what they're asked. It should be like name, Uh,
of course, there's gonna be a um, you know, your
phone number, of course, your email, the language that you
prefer to use for the app, of course, and billion
information which requires a valid credit cards you have to
(12:56):
have a valid credit card on hand when you create
the account, and that will then be the card that
has built for all of your Uber transportation, right. Yeah,
so be very careful with that because we all know
that it's easy for some people to slide into habit
and not notice how much money they're spending. Yeah, exactly right.
(13:17):
So you got to review all the terms and conditions
and all that, which is all pretty much standard really.
I mean, you just check that, make sure that you
know all that you know something you agree to, and
then confirm the creation of your account and you'll get
an email that says you're an active Uber user or
something like that. Right. Um, and you've already mentioned downloading
the Uber app. Um, you have to sign in using
your user name and password every time you use it, right,
(13:39):
so that someone can't just pick up your phone and
order a car charge it to your you know what,
that's a good question. It's kind of a like a
password security thing, right. Uh. Yeah, I hope. So that's
a good question though, because when I just pulled it
up right now, you know, I had installed the latest
update and it went right to Atlanta. That's a bit dangerous. Yeah,
I should be more careful and my phone. It's just
(14:01):
a word of caution to listeners. But you know, once
you get to where you had just talked about, you know,
when we can see all the vehicles you've already entered,
where you are, where you're gonna go to. You've got
a variety of choices. Right, you don't have to just
take you know, the closest vehicle, right, right, yes, Uh,
there is a rating system for Uber drivers. Right. You
can also request some preferences. You know. There are several
(14:24):
different tiers of Uber. I think they're five. I have
five listed here now there's probably more at this point,
because I think this thing is updated all time. It
depends on where you're listening to us. If you're another
country listening to us, they have different options, as we're
gonna find out when we talk about Germany later. But
here in the United States, this is kind of the
way it's laid out, and there are five choices. There's
the Black car Service, there's the taxi service, uber x
(14:48):
and suv service, and what they call a l u
X or luxury service. Now, the black car service that's
kind of the original Uber service, and that's a typically
a high end Sedan. You can carry up to four
riders in this car, so that makes sense, right, I mean,
it's a great big luxury car that shows up. It's
kind of like you know the Lincoln town Car exactly,
you know Cadillac that shows up. But um, the next
(15:10):
one is taxi and this is actually this is weird.
This is a local taxi service that has an agreement
with Uber. So you are actually calling a taxi, but
you're not paying the taxi rate. It's it's different. It's
an rate exactly right. You will you will pay through
the app. You don't pay the driver of the taxi
in this case, in this case, only when you use Uber.
So um, there's a little different rules to go along
(15:32):
with that. And I'll tell you about a tipping thing
that goes along with the taxi service in just a minute. Okay,
there's also uber x. This is relatively new, I believe, right. Yeah.
Uber x is a little bit more affordable, a little
bit less luxury, right yeah, because Uber is kind of
a I want to say, we can call it a
premium service. I guess definitely. I've got a nice stat here.
(15:55):
For a while. In d C, the price of an
Uber would be about fifty more than that of an
equivalent cab ride. Okay, so this is a this is
an alternative to uh, you know, having the Lincoln town Car,
the Cadillac or whatever, the mesury Sedani. This is a
this is where an everyday car comes and picks you up.
Now this sounds a little strange. We're talking about cars
(16:15):
like Priusts or maybe like a Nissan of some kind.
You know, it's uh, I'm just a hatchback maybe something
like that. Usually has four doors room for luggage because
they know that people are getting you know, to and
from the airport to and from um, you know, bus
stations or whatever wherever they need exactly. So, um, this
is like an alternative to the thing, and usually it
allows up to four riders. Again, it's a budget option,
(16:37):
and it's called different things in different places. I think
it's called uber pop in Germany, it's called uber x
in it in the United States, and definitely in Atlanta.
As a matter of fact, we pulled up the app
to check out a little bit of a demonstration there
for you. We also gotta pop up message that said, hey,
in Atlanta, we have a fifteen discount on uber x,
(16:59):
making it cheaper than average cabs in your area because
ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors. There is a war
going on for your cab fair. Absolutely, that's right. And
as a matter of fact, this has been the cause
of a few walkouts, a few um demonstrations, I guess
by taxi drivers. Isn't that right. There's been some some
(17:21):
taxi drivers that field it's not fair. You know, there's
there's opposition to Uber and them saying that it's not
fair that they are allowed to operate without the proper licensing.
So we said in nine seven we started having those
first taxi meters come out in New York. Well, let's
just fast forward to the Great Depression, when people are
trying to make money any way they can. So, if
(17:43):
you have a car, you're just trying to make that
car worthwhile. You want to make gas money, want to
make rent and food, maybe something nice for the kids
at Christmas. Right, So all these people who are flooding
into this unregulated cab market in New York City, UH
start what are called the fair wars. So people were
(18:04):
driving prices down, trying to form pricing cartels, UH to
maybe own some turf in the city. You know, like
tell those Long Island cab jerks to stay out of
our our turf. Right. And what this eventually led to
was something called the HAPs Act in seven, and that
(18:26):
goes back to that medallion system we were mentioning. It
limited the number of taxis to about thirteen thousand, five
hundred and sixties six ish. This is a bit of
a union hold on that city, right, Yes, I mean
that's kind of what this amounts to, right. I mean,
it's it's them saying grouping together and saying we want
to we want to have restrictions in place that allow
only us to operate in this vicinity, right right. So
(18:49):
the problem is with that regulation. A lot of people
who are for it say that it's necessary to restrict
this because cab drivers already make a little money and
if fair wars began again, then no one would really
win eventually. But most of these licenses or medallions, at
(19:09):
least in New York are owned by companies. Ah, yes, Bennett,
you know what, let me tell you that I've I've
been reading about some of the controversies or the opposition
to Uber along the way, and you know, over just
the last five years that they've been in operation, and
it's boy, there's a lot of regulatory opposition that's happening
in Australia and Canada and Poland, in Germany's will find
(19:32):
out the u K here in the United States, of course,
and just all over the place um and most of
this comes down to licensing. It's almost always licensing issues,
and the claims are that, you know, these Uber drivers
may leave the writers in a bad position if there's
ever an accident. Um You know that if there's an
accident that causes injury, the Uber drivers maybe aren't as
(19:54):
ensured as a as a big taxi corporation would be
because they have, you know, all the federal regulations that
are in play in the state and local regulations as well.
Maybe um Uber is not operating under the same set
of regulations. They may not hold the level of insurance
that they have that that the big companies have. It's
it's true what you say about regulations, because there's a
(20:14):
very interesting difference. Now. Opponents of Uber would call this
a loophole, right Advocates of Uber would say, it's legal.
What are you angry about? So Uber is regulated in
most places as a black car or livery service, and
(20:35):
that means to your point that Uber has less regulation
than a taxi cab would have. However, it's turning these services,
these relatively higher end services right into something that the
average person can get. It'll be expensive, but you can
get it, that's right, you know. And I want to
(20:57):
mention two more types of Uber vehicles as you're talking
about high end, and these are getting towards more the uh,
the the upper end of the scale here. So the
black car is already fairly expensive, taxis you know, as
you mentioned, a little cheaper I guess, right, and Uber
X is the budget Well, now we're getting into the
last two. And there's the suv service, which is a
(21:19):
significantly more expensive than the black car service. And this
is a large size suv that shows up to to
bring a large group you know, to and from the
airport to and from you know, whatever bar location they
want to go to the bachelor party exactly right, Yeah,
but it's a it's a much more expensive service. And
then there's the the ultimate high end I guess of Uber,
which is the luxury car service. Now, uh, this is
(21:42):
one that seats up to four people um against the
most expensive service available from them. But it's just a again,
a high end luxury sedan that comes and uh and
and caters you around in comfort and style. I filed
that one under don't just get me there, make me
look good on the way. That's true. Yeah, and a
lot of people that's that's very important. So you know,
(22:02):
of course they'll go for the luxury service. Maybe sometimes,
maybe not all the time. I don't know. It seems like, um,
you know, the average user would be more in the
black car taxi and Uber x area, occasionally the suv
and very rarely the luxury car service. Now let's go
ahead and talk about a few more of the pros
before we get to the con travers eyes. I'm sorry, man,
(22:27):
Oh yeah, I guess. But uh but here's one that
is that's pretty good about the system. So the drivers
who work for Uber prefer it often to working for
a cab because or even a black car service because
they don't have to pay kickbacks to dispatchers. Uh. So,
(22:48):
one of the founders, kalin Nick, said, you need to
set it up so that drivers make a lot of money.
Whenever we start in the city, we see mostly traffic
from drivers who are using us as a yield management system.
They're filling up a dead time and that predictable cash
flow allows them to expand their business and Uber, he
goes on to argue, also protects drivers from passengers because
(23:10):
you know, think about a tail as old as time
in the urban environment, somebody jumps out of the taxi
tries to run away without paying, right, exactly right now
you're talking about protects them from you know, lost fair
But there's also another kind of another layer of protection.
I guess if you want to call it this. Now,
someone could create a fake account, but you know who
(23:33):
is arriving to pick you up, right, You get a
profile of the driver, You get a profile of the
vehicle that's coming, right, I'll tell you that the license
plate even I think of the type of vehicle that's
coming and a picture of the driver. But it also
tells the driver who they're picking up. There's a um
I guess the way that the driver can see the
passengers as well, at least the person that ordered the
(23:54):
vehicle a two way rating system exactly right. So there's
a little bit more security in that than just picking
up anybody off the street, you know, I mean, it's
kind of the same thing again and that you know,
somebody could gain the system. I guess, you know they could.
They could set up a fake account and go to
a lot of trouble to do that. However, you know,
they still have to have a valid credit card. There's
some way to track who that person was and uh.
And that's just a little bit more safety than just
(24:15):
picking up again, anybody on the curb side, you know,
at two am after cars closed down, and guess. And
to show how much time and thought Uber is putting
into its drivers, there's a there's a neat thing that
a lot of people might not know. Uh. Uber didn't
just help drivers find fares. Uh. They lined up two
(24:40):
point five billion dollars in financing to give low interest
car loans to Uber x drivers. Very nice. So that
means up to two thousand drivers by cars at low
interest rates under the condition that they used the cars
for Uber during the duration of the loan. You know what,
now we haven't even talked about this, but I want to.
I want to bring this up right now, is that
(25:02):
it's possible for I don't know you and I to
be an Uber driver if we wanted to write and
you can do that through the websites. You can go
there and apply to be a driver. And really the
application process, I don't think it's terribly difficult. You you
have to prove who you are, prove your driving record
is good, you know, make sure that your your license
is on record and exactly exactly right in your vehicle
(25:26):
is is roadworthy, and you know, all the stuff that
you have to do normally to get a job like this.
You know, a taxi type service, but you don't have
to be part of a taxi union. You don't have
to be part of a a major taxi company in
your in your city. You just sign up on the
website and that's how you begin. So you can go
there and check it out and see exactly what's involved.
I haven't gone through the process of, you know, sign
(25:47):
up to be a driver. I'm afraid where that might
lead ben I might I might end up actually doing it, because, um,
it sounds like a way that you know, if you've
got you know, a date, let's see your student and
you've got class two days a week, three days a week,
and you've got the other two or three days free.
You may want to make a little cash on the side,
and you know, aside from the night job that you
normally do or whatever. Um, you could sign up to
(26:08):
be a driver and you kind of pick and choose
your hours. You decide when you're on the clock, when
you're off the clock, you know, as as much as
you want to drive as as much as you can make, right,
And they're of course going to have standards for the
type of car that is acceptable even for Uber X.
So for example, my car wouldn't work because it's a
coup and I'm not entirely sure of this been but
(26:30):
it may be a little bit too old as well.
And I think there's a model your consideration that has
to come in as well because of newer safety features
that you know have evolved over the past decade or so.
And you and I have both owned cars that are
about ten years old, and you know there's that advances
in that area, and they want to make sure that
their passengers are safe, right, and that makes sense. So
ultimately what Uber wants to do and the short term
(26:54):
is kill the taxi business. Yes, now, you know what
can I get? The one more thing? Because I I
keep looking at this note and I want to say it,
and I don't want to forget it before we if
we get I mentioned how you know the taxi services,
you're you're hiring an actual taxi when you when you
use Uber Taxi. Right, Yes, you're hiring an actual taxi,
but you're using the Uber rates and it's it's a
separate thing. You're paying via the smartphone and your credit card.
(27:17):
You're not really exchange in cash with the person. I
do want to point out though, and this is something
I mentioned earlier and I said, I get to it. Uh,
you're not paying cash again. The credit card is built directly.
But there is a tip that's added for the taxi
service automatically, and you know, and the thing is about tipping,
you know, that's kind of an unusual situation. I mean,
that's the only one that adds an automatic tip. It's
(27:40):
kind of up to you. It's your discretion if you
want to tip your Uber driver otherwise, because most don't
accept it. Here's um you can actually tip an Uber
X driver if you want as well. But the black car,
SUV and Limo drivers are not supposed to be tipped
in this case because they already have that built in.
There's a premium built into the price of the of
(28:00):
the ride so that you know when you're done, you're done.
You just hits you know, confirmed payment or whatever, and
it's and it's done, which is again so convenient, almost
dangerously so I I just I can see it getting
out of hand so easily I stopped myself. I had
to turn the dial down on my Uber use in Atlanta,
(28:22):
because it becomes easy, right yeah, yeah, And I have
a car, and it just became easier. You have your
own car, which sometimes you leave here, right and you'll
jump in an uber uber vehicle to get home. Right. Yeah.
I'll take the train from work and I'll go hang
out with friends or something, and then I'll either just
(28:42):
ride home with someone because I also live next to
another train station, and then just take the train back
to work in the morning, or I can just take
Uber and take it all the way, take it all
the way home, one step. It does seem awful easy,
and it does seem like, you know, once you have
this app available and it's something that you're accustomed to using,
(29:03):
and you know it's gonna work, and you know that
the billing is accurate and all that stuff, once you
become comfortable with it becomes something that you you would
use more frequently. I could understand that. And then you
got to really watch the credit card charges. You know
that I forgot to use it, you know, four times
last week. That's going to add up the the That
is one of the advantages slash dangers of Uber. But
(29:26):
but think about this. Let's say you're in a new
city and you'll say you're in you're traveling to New York,
and you're unfamiliar with the city. Now, maybe in the
New York isn't the best example. How about a smaller city.
Let's sayre in Philadelphia. All right, we're in Philly. You're
in Philly, and it's not much smaller, but it's smaller,
and uh, you know, you're just unfamiliar with exactly where
everything is, and you know you need to get to
a certain museum and you're at your hotel and you
(29:48):
don't know how where exactly to you know, hail a
cab or how that works there if it's easy or
if it's not easy, this is a simple way to
get around that. And if you know you're gonna go there,
even if you're from you know, some small town in
the Midwest that does not have UBER, you can sign
up for the Uber service, and then when you get
to Philadelphia, you have that available to you so that
you know, when you step out on the curb of
the hotel, you can order that Uber vehicle and you
(30:09):
know with confidence that you know this is the person
who's gonna pick me out. Here's a picture of the driver.
I know that that's who's coming and they're gonna be
here in three minutes because it's telling me and it'll
track the vehicle as it arrives, and they know who
they're picking up. It's all very it's all very simple,
very concise, very laid out for you, right, and Uber
is hoping that it's so much more simple, so much
(30:31):
more concise, so much more easily laid out than a cab.
And this goes back to one of the big controversies
that you know that we've been diplomatically talking about. But
let's go ahead and uh go international, let's go to
the cons. Not everyone is a fan of Uber, exactly right.
(30:55):
And you know we mentioned some some walkout some some
strikes that have been um you on record, especially in Europe. Yeah,
exactly right. And you know taxi drivers will will crowd
the city's you know, the streets and just get out
of the vehicles and standard just like a slowdown or
a work shutdown. I don't know what you would call that.
I guess when the when the taxi drivers just clog
up all traffic and refused to drive. So the recent
(31:18):
news out of Germany, ben is that Uber has been
banned across the entire country of Germany. Now okay, I understand,
you know that sounds pretty dramatic, right, I mean across
the entire country. This is no no longer able to happen. Well,
Uber uber Pop, I guess is what they call um,
the same service that we call uber x here in
the United States. You know the side you know, the
(31:39):
everyday car I guess you know the cars that you
and I could drive. All right, So Accord in Frankfurt
recently ruled, and I mean recently, like in September of
two thousand fourteen. They recently ruled that the firm lack
the necessary legal permits to operate under German law. So
again it's back to licensing. That's always the thing, right,
licensing regulations, uh red tape. Yeah, And they said that
(32:02):
they could face a fine if if the service continued,
and uh and the fine bend. The fine is huge. Now,
Taxi Deutsche Land suggested that Uber could face up to
a two hundred and fifty thousand euro fine per trip
if the American firm loses the case that they've got
against them. Now there's a court case, of course, brewing
is what I'm you know, getting at here. And Uber
(32:25):
spokesperson said that they're not going to suspend the service
and that the band was not enforceable, you know, while
this appeal process is ongoing, so it comes down to
a lot of legal back and forth. But you know,
here's you know, the Taxi Deutsche Land company saying, you know,
they're gonna face this tremendous fine if they operate in
our jurisdiction, you know, up to two fifty thousand euros
(32:46):
per trip, which is a huge, huge amount. That's you
know what that is. That's in US dollars three hundred
and twenty seven thousand, eight hundred and forty per trip.
What if if they if they violate this, but then
you know, the Uber spokesperson said, as now, we're not
going to suspend service. We're gonna carry on as usual
because we know we're right. You know, we've done it.
We we fought this fight in other cities across the world,
(33:10):
We're right. So they're gonna they're gonna battle Germany in
this in this whole thing, so you know, this whole
appeal process. Who knows how long that's gonna take. But
but watch for some Uber news coming out of Germany
pretty soon, because you know, the taxi drivers say it's
unfair competition because they have um far fewer regulatory restrictions.
They're they're placed upon Uber versus the taxi company, and
(33:34):
uh what I mean, there's a lot to say about that, right, yeah, yeah,
for sure. I mean alright, Ben, so I mentioned, you know,
regulations put in place, and you know that's very restrictive,
right yeah, all right, Well what do you think the
solution to that is? Maybe, uh, I don't know, smaller
as smaller government come on them. Well, you know, it's
funny because this has gone the fight about Uber and
(33:56):
the war between them and cab companies has gone to
the halls of Congress. You know, politicians, at least in
the United States, I don't know about where. You guys
are listening to this show, are taking up the flag
for or against Uber, or for I guess they're all
saying it's for something like for the taxi cab companies
or for Uber. People like Mark Rubio are big Uber fans.
(34:21):
I bet they are. Yeah, exactly right. And you know what,
just to just to underlying this point or underscore this
point that the spokesperson from the taxi Deutsche Land UH
says that this is a quote form of locust share
economy and they also call it anarchy capitalism that could
leave passengers exposed during an accident. Now that's where the
safety issue comes up, right, So they're they're they're major
(34:44):
claim here. I guess is you know not that that
it's competition and they're kind of undercutting the rates on them.
You know, they're they're getting more business. Uh, it's that
you know, it's it's a it's a passenger's safety issue,
Ben Oh right, Yeah, it's it's for safety. They're concerned
about the people, the children been they're concerned about of children, Scott, Well,
the children who are calling Uber seven to get a ride.
(35:06):
That's the teenagers, right. Who knows? Man Germany is a
crazy place, crazy cool, crazy cool. Yeah. I went to
Germany once and everybody in that country is way cooler
than me. You heard it here first. Yeah, I was
so impressed. Man, they got these doner kebabs. Okay, moving on,
I'm getting derailed. If you have had a donn you
(35:29):
know what I'm talking about. They're amazing and that's the
first thing to eight when I go back. But it
looks like I might have to grab a regular cab
from the airport, possibly because you know, Uber says that
you know, all rides and all travelers in those rides
are ensured. There's no there's no concern there. That's what
we're saying. They're saying this court case shouldn't go on
(35:49):
longer than one day, you know, like we're just come
in with the facts. It's done. That's why they're saying,
we're not going to suspend service. We know we're right
in the situation. We fought this fight. Here it is
again and when we know we're going to come out
victorias right. And it's in their f a Q. That's
how you know it's been an issue because they have
a section in their f a Q about that where
they talk about one million dollars of liability coverage per incident,
(36:14):
one million dollars of uninsured underinsured, bodily injury coverage fifty
thou dollars a contingent, comprehensive collision, no false coverage. They
they're saying that they have this stuff sealed up. Yeah,
and and by part of I mean I guess by extension,
the drivers that that drive for Uber are also insured.
(36:36):
So you know there's like another level of this. I
guess there's the company that's insured, right right, company insurance
on a vehicle that's used for Uber service, and then
the motorists and the driver has to be insured as well.
That's part of that whole sign up procedure. You know,
all the information that I was talking about before they
have to provide. Of course, you have to be insured.
Of course, you have to be insured to a certain
level and of a certain type. Right now, when we
(36:59):
get to the criticism regarding UM guarding regulations for drivers specifically,
we've already talked about the criticism, the level playing field,
criticism for cab companies versus Uber and whether or not
it's gonna work, And actually, can I sidebar for a
second here? Of course, I really enjoyed the episode we
(37:23):
did on the Knowledge Member with those black cab drivers.
I do Yeah, that was an intense test. Yeah. So
the knowledge is a test so intense. It's the test
every black cab driver has to take to drive in
the City of London. Um and London because there's a
place in London called the City of London, which isn't
(37:44):
necessarily London anyway, and cab drivers would know that, and
cab drivers would know all about that. So the knowledge
is a test that is so difficult that after you
have driven a cat most people fail it. And after
you have driven it have for a number of decades
parts of your brain change. They grow larger, the parts
(38:06):
of associated with spatial recognition and navigation and stuff. So
these guys in London at least have this wealth of knowledge.
And the argument on their side would be that an
Uber driver doesn't have that, they have a GPS right. Um,
But these industries, which are protected by government regulations, especially
(38:29):
in Europe, are coming head to head with Uber. But
Uber's first plan is to UH, is to take these
guys out, regardless of any criticisms around regulation. And in
New York, for example, they don't have to take a
(38:50):
crazy test like the knowledge, but you know, you have
to have a clean driving record, drug test, UH, sexual
harassment lessons, defensive driving course, all before you get in
the car for your first day of work. UH. The
question is whether or not Uber has the same level
of scrutiny for its drivers. And I have a story
for you to introduce us to more of these controversies.
(39:14):
So there is an article here about one lady's experience
with Uber and she was she lived near Lincoln Center
in New York City, right and was going across town
called the Uber and it was a regular trip. But
(39:34):
at the end of the ride, the Uber driver asked
her if she had been at Lincoln Center a few
hours earlier. She said she hadn't because she didn't remember
walking past there. He took out his iPad, Really, he asked,
because you look like this girl, and he turned the
iPad to face the back seat. She saw full length,
close up picture of herself wearing the workout clothes she
(39:55):
had had on an hour earlier. The driver asked if
she wanted him to send the pictures. She declined, and
you know, made like a banana and split. So she
gave it a one star review. UM. And then Uber
responded and and said, you know, we've turned this information
to our driver team. She complained to Uh, it's never
(40:19):
okay for a writer to feel uneasy. We'll do everything
we can to make this better. We know money can't
solve anything, but you know, here's twenty dollar credit. What
a creepy story. It doesn't end there because the driver
a few days later, UM apparently gets a message or
sends a message to this woman via an intermediary. And
(40:41):
the driver said, I need your help to get my
job back, UM and said, you've been driver for twenty
years and what had happened between him and the jogger
lady was a misunderstanding and Uber it immediately fired him,
he said, and uh, he didn't want to seem like
he's a bad guy or something. And then he sent
(41:03):
the email to the lady, the jogging lady at her
professional email address, and to her boss. So that's where
she found out that Uber gets more than the first
name of a writer. So be careful with your information.
That's the underlying Uh. I guess I guess a lesson
in this whole thing that you never know what someone's
(41:25):
gonna do with your personal information. But man, that's creepy,
isn't it. That's really weird And for him to contact
her the next day as well. Yeah, yeah, this is
I mean, and this is not to say that Uber
is bad or people are crazy, but this is also
not a commercial for Uber. We're talking about this company.
So these are these are the good and bad things
you need to know. Sure, yeah, I understand. And it
(41:48):
just seems like, you know, you mentioned that, you know
when I when I was asking you about your Uber
app and you pulled it up, that your information was
right there and available. It seems like somebody could grab
your phone use that to to you know, get across town,
you know, via your stolen phone. Wow, it would be
pretty easy, right, it's built your account. You can't really
prove it wasn't you unless the driver, you know, has
a photo of you and says that was not the
(42:10):
guy that I picked up about you know, we can
dispute this charge or whatever. I don't know if you
even do that. What a good action sequence for taking
three or something? You know, you need to get across town,
so you just grab a phone someone else's phone? Uber
across the subplot, there's one more thing. It's really interesting.
Is it cool if we go into this? Okay, so
(42:30):
there's another article that says Uber has a crazy plan,
the kind of thing that even Ellen Musk would call ambviciously. Ye,
killing the taxi business is just the first part. They
want to be the cheapest, best way to get around
all the major cities in the world. The medium objective
for Uber, according to this article, which is speculative, is
(42:53):
much broader, and it has to do with what tech
nerds call the death of the ownership society. So, uh,
there's one guy who already sold his three series BMW
because it was cheaper for him to use Uber where
he lived. Uh. The argument is that as Uber rides
become cheaper and cheaper, people will just not need to
(43:14):
own cars. That's their idea, and they want to partner
up with other non car companies. So why buy an
expensive grill for summer picnic? The article says, when for
forty dollars, Uber can deliver a grill in half an hour,
deliver a grill and you know, take it back. Oh
my gosh. This is kind of weird. So from there,
(43:36):
if step one is to take over taxi, step two
is to kill ownership, what if Uber starts using autonomous
vehicles In his defense, the guy also goes back and says,
you know, if this sounds fanciful, it's because it is.
But what if Uber becomes too two cabs and two
hired cars? What if it becomes the Google of that market.
(43:58):
Let me tell you something, because you're reminding me of
something that that I feel like we need to talk
about before we close out here. All right, So you
mentioned that, you know, bringing a grill to a summer
picnic or something like that. That sounds outlandish, right, but
listen to some of the Uber promotions that have happened
just recently. I mean, he's not long ago. Now. Remember
when you were a kid and you would just there
(44:18):
was really no rhyme or reason to whin the ice
cream truck would arrive, you know, sometimes it would sometimes
come by at this time. Sometimes it would come by
on the weekend, sometimes in the evening. You didn't exactly
right now, this one. You can summon the ice cream
truck to your location. So let's say you're at the
neighborhood pool and you decide you want an ice cream.
You can summon that that truck there and they'll come
(44:38):
to a specific place. And sometimes they even have packages
of ice cream products that they will offer to you
for a certain rate. Let's say that you are a
package of you know, I'm gonna at least order fifteen
of this type of item, So will you come here?
And they'll say, of course, we'll be there. It's not like,
you know, I just come here and we'll see what
kind of business we drum up. But in addition to whoever,
they just kind of get on the why you know,
(45:00):
whoever just also shows up, you have guaranteed that they're
gonna sell X number of snow cones or whatever they
happen to have. Right, so this ice cream truck thing
went over fairly well, I believe, And then they offered
a Back to the Future uh program or promotion where
I believe you could summon a DeLorean that looked like,
you know, the one out of Back to the Future.
(45:20):
What I think it did now the photo shows the
Delorum that looks like the back of the futures think
future thing. But I'm thinking that maybe it was just Deloreans.
So like if there was a DeLorean in the area,
they could they could have that arrived. I'm not sure
that was, you know, in every case, the one that
looked like the movie prop. All right, another one was
a helicopter service that you could order from New York
(45:41):
City to the Hampton's during the Fourth of July weekend.
That was like I want to say, that was like
three thousand dollars. It was one flat fee. Pretty expensive,
but not a bad way to arrive to the party, right, Yeah,
I think they can soak the cost. I think so too.
And then there's also a ferry service that was offered,
which is again kind of strange, you know, ferry service,
but that was offered during the two thousand thirteen bart strike,
(46:03):
which helped, you know, like handle the additional I guess
transit load that was necessary. Right, You could order a
ferry to come pick you up. And then this is
so weird. They had well, they had a Christmas tree
delivery service that I guess worked out fairly well for them.
They had a kitten delivery service. You could have a
kitten delivered to your location. Now, I think this is
only a couple of locations that was offered in um
(46:25):
I want to say, San Francisco, Seattle in New York City,
and it was like twenty dollars and they would they
would arrive with a kitten and you'd have like fifteen
minutes of playtime with the kittens, and they would bring
I think cupcakes and T shirts and things like that,
you know, like Uber t shirts. That's a very strange thing.
But you know, when you think of things like you
(46:46):
mentioned with the grill, you know, to the summer picnic,
it's not that farfetched to think that they could offer
something like this because they've already done it. I mean,
Amazon used to just sell books. That's a good point.
And most people, you know, I've had a lot of
people have ever ordered a book from Amazon. They probably
ordered every other thing besides the book, right, yeah, just
watch TV with it thru. But this, okay, this is
(47:08):
interesting because I don't know about you listeners, but this
is setting off all sorts of crazy science fiction red
flags in my head. You know, I I was about
to make a joke about renting a pet, and it
turns out they've already done it. It's true. So what
do you guys think is the future of uber now?
Of course, we didn't have time to squeeze in some
(47:30):
other vital information, such as the astonishing software they used
to distribute these calves and manage the logistics of this.
We also didn't talk about other similar companies like Lift
with a Y with competition to Uber. Yeah, Lift with
a Y like it's a metal band in the eighties.
(47:52):
But uh, but we would love to hear what you think,
and we hope that if you have not heard of Uber,
this is an interesting introduction. We are not in any
way paid or renumerated by Uber. As a matter of fact,
you heard me say earlier that I have really turned
down the Uber usage, that I've never used Uber, Right,
(48:12):
that's true. Uh, So we'd like to hear your stories.
We'd like to hear your experiences. I know that someone
out there who has used Uber, who's listening right now,
accidentally got in the wrong car because it happens. You know,
you're waiting for the Uber car and then another black
car pulls up and you just opened the handle punt. Yeah,
(48:34):
happen to me once, and it did really bad about
it was who's more shocked, you or the driver? Uh?
Probably the driver, because it was just some random JABRONI
running up to his car. Sure, he just made a mistake,
but yeah, he's dealing with a space violation. I mean
he you know, if somebody ran up to my car
(48:57):
and did that, his car was locked. But if someone
ran up to my car that fashion and open the
back door, I would assume a crime was about to
take place. Be terrifying, wouldn't it. Yeah, So apologies to you,
kindly stranger, and uh I did apologize. And whoever else
it happens to today, because it's going to happen at
some point today to somebody. Yeah, probably statistically, and let
(49:18):
us let us know what you think about this. So
you can find us on Facebook and Twitter, where you
can also watch our first episode of our Dream Cars
video series. You can visit car stuff show dot com
for every single one of our six podcasts. And I
just have to say again, Scott, congratulations, thanks for keeping
(49:38):
me around for six hundred episodes. Likewise, been congratulations to you.
I mean I should thank you for for having me
for that long because you've been a great co host
and I really appreciate all the work you do to
put the show together. Checks man on the short round
to the Indiana now come on, so uh yes, yes,
(49:59):
it's one of buy many failings on to models that
here too much. I'm kidding. I am kidding, of course,
But if you want to be part of this, if
you want to help us with some new ideas for
upcoming shows, please do. Our best suggestions always come from
our listeners, and our email address is car stuff and
how stuff work dot com. For more on this and
(50:24):
thousands of other topics, is the how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think, send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com m
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