Promotional limited services
Uber has also operated promotional limited services, such as rides of up to 15 minutes each on September 6–8, 2013 in San Francisco in the DeLorean that was featured in the Back to the Future film franchise.
Uber allowed users to hire speedboats in the summer to/from certain points on the coast of Croatia. Uber has also offered transport across Biscayne Bay during Miami Art Week and across the Bosporus strait in Istanbul in the summer.
Rating scores
After each journey, drivers are required to rate passengers on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. Passengers are not required to rate the driver, although are encouraged to do so using the same 1 to 5 scale. Riders and drivers who have low ratings can be deactivated. In May 2019, Uber began actively banning riders with low ratings. The company has not defined in detail what will be considered a “below average rating”, but the update is intended to remove users who are unable to improve their behavior.
Other products and services
- Uber Eats provides meal delivery from nearby participating restaurants for a fee of approximately $4.
- Uber and issuing bank Barclays offer a Visa Inc. credit card that offers customers a cashback reward program and other incentives.
- Uber Freight matches freight shippers with truckers in a similar fashion to the matching of taxi passengers with drivers.
Promotional limited services
Self-driving car research
Advanced Technologies Group (Uber ATG) is a subsidiary of the company that is developing self-driving cars. Uber ATG is minority owned by Softbank Vision Fund, Toyota, and Denso.
In early 2015, the company hired approximately 50 people from the robotics department of Carnegie Mellon University.
On September 14, 2016, Uber launched its first self-driving car services to select customers in Pittsburgh, including Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto, using a fleet of Ford Fusion cars each equipped with 20 cameras, seven lasers, Global Positioning System, lidar, and radar equipment that enabled the car to create a three-dimensional map utilizing landmarks and other contextual information to keep track of its position.
On December 14, 2016, Uber began using self-driving Volvo XC90 SUVs in its hometown of San Francisco. On December 21, 2016, the California Department of Motor Vehicles revoked the registration of the 16 vehicles Uber was using for the test and forced the program to cease operations in California.
Uber then moved the program to Arizona, where the cars were able to pick up passengers, albeit with two Uber engineers in the front seats as a safety precaution. In March 2017, an Uber self-driving car was flipped on its side by a vehicle that failed to yield. In October 2017, Uber started using only 1 test driver despite some employees' safety concerns.
In November 2017, Uber announced a non-binding plan to buy up to 24,000 Volvo XC90 SUV vehicles designed to accept autonomous technology (including a different type of steering and braking mechanism and sensors) between 2019 and 2021.
In March 2018, the death of Elaine Herzberg by an Uber self-driving vehicle in Tempe, Arizona resulted in temporary pause to Uber's self driving vehicle testing. According to police, the woman was run down by the Uber vehicle while attempting to cross the street, while the person in the vehicle was watching videos on her phone.
Uber pulled its self-driving cars off all public roads and quickly reached a settlement with the victim's family. There was disagreement among local authorities as to whether or not the car or the victim was at fault.
In December 2018, after receiving local approval, Uber restarted testing of its self driving cars, only during daylight hours and at slower speeds, in Pittsburgh and Toronto. In March 2019, Uber was found not criminally liable by Yavapai County Attorney's Office for the death of Ms. Herzberg. The company changed its approach to self-driving vehicles after Herzberg's death, inviting both Waymo and General Motors’ Cruise self-driving vehicle unit to operate vehicles on Uber’s ride-hailing network.
Prior to its IPO, Uber projected the potential operation of 75,000 autonomous vehicles, in 13 cities, by 2022. These projections, developed through an internal effort codenamed Project Rubicon, targeted the possibility of profitable autonomous vehicles by 2018 in an initial January 2016 report, with a May 2016 report claiming that 13,000 autonomous Uber vehicles could be operating by 2019. The 75,000-vehicle figure was proposed in September 2016. To reach these goals, Uber spent a reported $20 million a month on research and development, according to TechCrunch.
Other sources have estimated Uber’s spending on self-driving vehicle research to have reached as high as $200 million per quarter.
In April 2019, Uber scientist Raquel Urtasun offered a more cautious estimate of the company’s eventual self-driving capabilities, saying "self-driving cars are going to be in our lives. The question of when is not clear yet. To have it at scale is going to take a long time."
Cancellation of research on autonomous trucks
After spending $925 million to develop autonomous trucks, Uber cancelled its self-driving truck program in July 2018. Uber acquired Otto for $625 million in 2016.
According to a February 2017 lawsuit filed by Waymo, owned by an affiliate of Google, ex-Google employee Anthony Levandowski allegedly "downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo's highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation" before resigning to found Otto, which was purchased by Uber.
A ruling in May 2017 required Uber to return documents to Waymo. The trial began February 5, 2018. A settlement was announced on February 8, 2018 in which Uber gave Waymo $244 million in Uber equity and agreed not to infringe on Waymo's intellectual property.
History
Uber was founded in 2009 as UberCab by Garrett Camp, a computer programmer and the co-founder of StumbleUpon, and Travis Kalanick, who had sold his Red Swoosh startup for $19 million in 2007.
On New Year's Eve, after Camp and his friends spent $800 hiring a private driver, Camp wanted to find a way to reduce the cost of direct transportation. He realized that sharing the cost with people could make it affordable, and his idea morphed into Uber. Kalanick joined Camp and gives him "full credit for the idea" of Uber.[64] The first prototype was built by Camp and his friends, Oscar Salazar and Conrad Whelan, with Kalanick being brought on as a "mega advisor" to the company.
Following a beta launch in May 2010, Uber's services and mobile app officially launched in San Francisco in 2011. Originally, the application only allowed users to hail a black luxury car and the price was 1.5 times that of a taxi.
In February 2010, Ryan Graves became the first Uber employee, getting the job by responding to a tweet from Kalanick announcing the job opening, and receiving 5–10% of the company. Graves started out as general manager and shortly after the launch was named as CEO.[64] After ten months, in December 2010, Kalanick succeeded Graves as CEO. Graves became the company's chief operating officer (COO).
In 2011, the company changed its name from UberCab to Uber after complaints from San Francisco taxi operators.
The company's early hires included a nuclear physicist, a computational neuroscientist, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting demand for private hire car drivers and where demand is highest.
In April 2012, in Chicago, Uber launched a service where users were able to request a regular taxi or an Uber driver via its mobile app.
In July 2012, the company introduced UberX, a cheaper option that lets people drive for Uber using non-luxury vehicles, subject to a background check, registration requirement, and car standards. At first, rates were similar to those of taxis and were 35% cheaper than UberBLACK.
By early 2013, the service was operating in 35 cities. Uber allowed drivers to use their personal vehicles as part of UberX starting in April 2013.[78] Rates were quickly lowered, which caused some dissatisfaction among UberBLACK and taxi drivers, whose earnings decreased as a result of the increased competition at lower rates.
In August 2014, Uber launched UberPOOL, a carpooling service, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The service was then launched in other cities worldwide: Paris in November 2014, New York City in December 2014, China in August 2015, Washington, D.C. in October 2015, London in December 2015, the suburbs of Boston in January 2016, Hyderabad, Kolkata Mumbai, and Singapore in June 2016,
Delaware in September 2016, Toronto (Brampton and Scarborough) in April 2017, Nashville in December 2017, Sydney in April 2018, and Melbourne in June 2018.
In August 2014, Uber launched Uber Eats, a food delivery service.
In August 2016, after facing tough competition in China, Uber sold its operations in China to DiDi, in exchange for an 18% stake in Didi.[97] Didi also agreed to invest $1 billion into Uber Global.[98] Uber had started operations in China in 2014, under the name 优步 (yōubù).[99]
In August 2017, Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Expedia which had led an $11M investment in Wingz, became the CEO of Uber.
In fall 2017, Uber became a gold member of the Linux Foundation and received a five star privacy rating from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In February 2018, Uber combined its operations in Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia and Kazakhstan with those of Yandex.Taxi and invested $225 million in the venture.
In March 2018, Uber merged its services in Southeast Asia with those of Grab in exchange for a 27.5% ownership stake in Grab.
As of March 2018, men accounted for 62.0% of overall company employment, 51.4% of support staff, and 82.1% of technology-related employment. White people made up 48.6% of the overall employment base and Asian people account for 32.3%. However, for technology-related jobs, White people were 46.3% of employees, while Asian people accounted for 44.7% of employment.
Rent, powered by Getaround, was a peer-to-peer carsharing service available to some users in San Francisco between May 2018 and November 2018.
On May 10, 2019, the company became a public company via an initial public offering underwritten by 30 banks including Morgan Stanley. Following the initial public offering, Uber's shares dropped 11%, resulting in the biggest first-day dollar loss in IPO history for the US. It then posted losses of $1 billion on its first quarter of 2019 in its first earnings report as a public company. A month after going public, both COO Barney Harford and CMO Rebecca Messina stepped down. Uber posted a drastic US$5.2 billion loss of for the second quarter of 2019. The loss included US$3.9 billion of "stock-based compensation expenses" related to employee equity delivered as a result of the IPO, and an operating loss of US$1.3 billion.
Facing continued losses, the marketing department headcount was reduced by a third on July 29, 2019 with the lay-off of 400 people. Engineer hires were frozen as well.
In early September 2019, Uber laid off an additional 435 employees with 265 coming from the engineering team and another 170 coming from the product team.
Business model
Stakeholders
Passengers
Passengers use an app to order a ride, where they are quoted the fare. Uber uses a dynamic pricing model; prices for the same route vary based on the supply and demand for rides at the time the ride is requested. At the end of the ride, payment is made based on the rider's pre-selected preferences, which could be a credit card on file, Google Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, cash, or, in India, Airtel mobile wallet or Unified Payments Interface. After the ride is over, the rider is given the option to provide a gratuity to the driver, which is also billed to the rider's payment method. In some locations, if the driver has to wait more than a few minutes after arriving to the pickup location, riders are charged a wait time fee.
Drivers
The status of drivers as independent contractors is an unresolved issue (see Criticism). Uber drivers use their own cars although drivers can rent or lease a car to drive with Uber. Uber offers car rental or leasing via Getaround, Hertz, and Fair and Uber and BYD Auto have a partnership to provide leasing of electric cars to Uber drivers in Chicago and New York City.
Drivers must meet requirements for age, health, car age and type, have a driver's license and a smartphone or tablet, and must pass a background check. In many cities, vehicles used by Uber drivers must pass annual safety inspections and/or must have an Uber emblem posted in the passenger window. Some cities also require Uber drivers to have a business license. A mechanism called "Real-Time ID Check" requires some drivers to occasionally take selfies when logging on to Uber.
Drivers use an app to receive and accept offers for transportations and further information. The Uber driver app includes accommodations for hearing-impaired drivers.
Service options
Offered[edit]
- UberX, the basic level of service, provides a private ride in a standard car with driver for up to four passengers. UberX and UberXL cars with child safety seats are available for an additional charge. Persons with a service animal may use any type of Uber service, as required by law. Rider service levels, many of which are only available in certain cities, include:
- ASSIST provides additional assistance to senior citizens and passengers with a physical disability, but cannot transport a non-folding wheelchair (see UberWAV for wheelchair-accessible vehicles).
- Bike is a dockless bicycle-sharing system that allows users to rent electric bicycles via Uber subsidiary Jump Bikes in nine metropolitan areas in the United States including San Francisco and Washington, D.C. Uber users are also able to rent Lime scooters in 46 cities via the Uber mobile app.
- BLACK provides a black luxury vehicle.
- Chapchap, available in Nairobi, Kenya is a low-cost service offering transport via a Suzuki Alto, a kei car. "Chapchap" means "faster" in the Swahili language.
- ESPAÑOL, available in California, is a version of UberX (see below) that provides a Spanish-speaking driver.
- Comfort includes newer cars with additional legroom.
- FLASH, available in Hong Kong and Singapore, is a service that combines both private cars and taxis, operated by ComfortDelGro in Singapore.
- Green, available in Europe, provides an electric car or hybrid vehicle at the same price as UberX.
- Health, available for health professionals in the United States, is a HIPAA-compliant method to arrange rides for patients to-and-from their appointments. Patients without smartphones can receive pickup information via Text messaging or via the health professional's office.
- Hire, available in India, provides a vehicle for hire for local travel.
- Lux, provides upper-class vehicles.
- MOTO, available in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Dominican Republic, provides transportation by motorcycle.
- POOL, available for up to two people per party, provides a ride that is possibly shared with other riders going in the same general direction. Unless the rider pays an additional fee for door-to-door service, the rider(s) are required to walk a short distance at both ends of the ride to save time for the driver and other riders. The pickup/drop-off locations are indicated via a map in the mobile app.
- Upper-class vehicles are marketed und the names Premier (India), Premium (New York City suburbs), Exec (London, Berlin?) and Select.
- SUV provides a sport utility vehicle.
- Taxi allows users to summon a taxi using the Uber software application.[42] Users pay an additional booking fee and can leave a gratuity through the app.[42] The service was implemented to appease taxi drivers who protested the increased competition from Uber.[42]
- Van, available in Europe, provides a van for groups of up to 6 people.
- WAV aka ACCESS provides a wheelchair accessible vehicle.
- UberAuto, available in India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, provides transportation by auto rickshaw.
- UberGO, available in India and Sri Lanka, provides for a ride in a hatchback.
- UberXL provides a ride in a large vehicle that can seat up to 6 passengers.
Services under development
- UberAIR / UberElevate will provide short flights using VTOL aircraft. Demonstration flights are projected to start in 2020 in Dallas and Los Angeles. Commercial operations are projected to begin in 2023. Although technically feasible, the program is expected to encounter safety and regulatory obstacles.
