Despite governments’ best efforts, such as Germany’s recent blanket ban earlier this month, Uber’s ridesharing service is experiencing phenomenal growth, with the number of drivers under its ridesharing umbrella reportedly growing by some 50,000 per month. From the Wall Street Journal:
The company is currently growing its ranks at a rate of 50,000 new drivers a month, Chief Executive Travis Kalanick said Monday morning in an interview onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in San Francisco. Uber works with “hundreds of thousands” of drivers in total, he said.
Uber is racing to add drivers to keep up with surging demand for the service in the roughly 210 cities where it operates. The company has lured drivers with cash rewards and perks such as new-car financing…
Kalanick said Uber is growing faster in Europe than it is in the U.S., even as regulatory battles have restricted growth in cities like Frankfurt.
Uber’s growth should be a warning sign to taxi industries everywhere. Their government protected monopolies are under threat, as are inflated taxi plate valuations. Despite their best efforts, governments cannot hold back technology forever, and it is only a matter of time before they will have to face reality (and consumers’ wishes) and allow Uber to operate legally.
If an idea is a good one – and Uber’s most certainly is – it won’t just quietly disappear. Plus, we have seen before how this story ends. Technology will win the day – just as the invention of the personal motor car won the battle against the horse-and-cart and railway industries, which lobbied governments to erect all kinds of barriers aimed at preventing their operation.
Ultimately, the net result from Uber (and ridesharing services more generally) should be safer, more reliable, and more affordable transport options for consumers, along with better pay for drivers currently caught in taxi licence holders’ monopolist net.
Popularity is a powerful form of political leverage. And with Uber now operating in more than 200 cities around the world, and hundreds-of-thousands of drivers under its banner, Uber has popularity in spades. It also has very deep pockets, thanks to its alliance with Google, and the ability to wait-out short-term political opposition.
The underlying message to the traditional taxi industry is: “Move aside. Uber has landed and it ain’t going away”.
