Ever since the emergence of Uber and DiDi and Gett and Yandex and all the rest of the app-based ride hailing operators I have been worried about taxis. I had a sneaking suspicion that the ride hail operators were exploiting a loophole that put taxis at a disadvantage creating a mortal threat.
My suspicions were borne out by taxi driver… Read More
One of my pet beefs with the car industry is that car makers, on the whole, have failed to agree among themselves as to what basic vehicle connectivity ought to consist of. From car maker to car maker prices vary, bundles vary, free periods of service access vary and the variations get worse between model years as offers change and … Read More
The COVID-19 pandemic taught many lessons and revealed various weaknesses in global supply chains and business models. The transportation industry was hit particularly hard as people stopped moving thereby taking down public transit, crashing rental car companies and airlines, and erasing the fleets of ride hailing operators.… Read More
Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Instacart and Doordash were successful in their nearly $200M effort to pass California’s Proposition 22 in November – to allow gig operators to avoid treating their drivers as full-time employees with all of the associated employee benefits and legal protections. In the midst of a devastating pandemic… Read More
As the death toll in the U.S. from COVID-19 approaches 300,000 I am impressed by the resilience of pandemic doubters and deniers. I’m talking about the point-three-percent-ers* who have shifted from calling COVID-19 a hoax to encouraging as many people as possible to get the virus to “get it over with.”
Maybe “impressed” isn’t… Read More
Reuters reports that Uber has quietly launched a service to give public health officials quick access to data on drivers and riders presumed to have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19. Now Uber, one of the primary vectors spreading the disease with hundreds of thousands of masked drivers worldwide guiding shared
A funny thing happens when you let car makers make cars and car dealers sell cars – people start buying cars. With the U.S. economy at least partially re-opening nationwide car buyers have returned to the market and, finding a limited supply of new cars and disappointing incentives, have turned, in part, to used cars. This … Read More
By now it is pretty clear that everywhere outside of China and South Korea human beings are doing a lousy job of “social distancing,” locking down, and sheltering in place. This is unfortunate because experts agree that only a complete lockdown will stop COVID-19 from infecting millions, continuing to kill thousands,
When I landed at San Francisco International Airport last Tuesday morning around 1 a.m. I was determined to locate the airport taxi rank and take a cab to my hotel in Santa Clara. The idea of hailing an Uber or Lyft seemed essentially nonsensical to me since I knew professional taxi drivers would be waiting as they usually are at most… Read More
The time may have finally arrived to put app-based transportation options out of commission. The latest report of 3,000 rapes and sexual assaults committed on or by Uber drivers in 2018 highlights a serious and possibly growing shortcoming of gig-type ride-hailing and delivery services: the weakness of driver background checks… Read More
