Spritely seniors in Japan signing up to deliver on foot for Uber Eats

Uber Technologies Inc.’s strategy for Japan, where ride-sharing is banned, is as unique as the country itself — think grandma in running shoes delivering ramen noodles.

Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi was in Japan last week to stress the importance of the market, where the San Francisco-based company has built a growing food delivery business but kept rides limited to black-car hires and taxi dispatches.

Japan is also home to Uber’s biggest shareholder, SoftBank Group Corp., and where Khosrowshahi is planning to boost staff in the coming year.

“The elderly are actually signing up for Eats couriers,” Khosrowshahi said. “Eats has been a huge success for us in Japan. It is going to be a very effective introduction to the Uber brand.”

Building up Uber Eats could be the company’s best chance, for now, to capture revenue in the world’s third-largest economy. More than 10,000 restaurants and 15,000 couriers are part of a delivery network spanning 10 Japanese cities, according to the CEO. That puts the service within reach of about 15 percent of the population, compared with 70 percent in the U.S., leaving plenty of room to grow, he said.

With an unemployment rate of 2.4 percent, near quarter-century lows, Japan’s labor market is tight. The population is aging; adult diapers outsell baby diapers. Seniors are tapping into food delivery to find jobs, in addition to getting hot meals delivered to their doors.

While most workers deliver using a bicycle or scooter, seniors in search of exercise are doing it on foot, Khosrowshahi said.

“This is one area unique to Japan, and we are looking if we can expand to the rest of the world,” he said.

To support its Eats business, as well as its nascent efforts to offer dispatch services for taxi companies, Uber is planning to increase full-time staffing in Japan by more than 30 percent over the next year from about 100 now, in areas such as account management, sales and local operations. Even at that pace, it is still a tiny proportion of Uber’s global head count of 22,000.

Shares in small food delivery firms have been sliding on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. “Uber Eats has a cutting-edge, cool image, so concerns could easily develop that young users might switch into Uber Eats,” said Iwai Cosmo Securities equities manager Toshikazu Horiuchi.

Given Japan’s strict regulations against ride-sharing, Uber has chosen to work with regulators. It rolled out a pilot program in 2016 to provide rides to seniors in the small coastal district of Tango in Kyotango, Kyoto Prefecture, where an aging population was left with dwindling public transport services.

Last year, Uber pivoted to partnerships with local taxi companies. It now has deals with eight cab companies in as many cities, including popular tourist destinations Kyoto, Osaka and Hiroshima. Sony Corp., startup Japan Taxi and China’s Didi Chuxing are among those that have rolled out competing taxi-hailing apps, seeking to make it easier for consumers to hail rides and get to their destinations. Uber Black, the car-hire service, is currently available only in Tokyo.

“It will take time, but we like what we see in terms of the potential of the market,” Khosrowshahi said. “The innovations that we are going to make in taxi here are going to carry around the world.”

The CEO also took time during his Tokyo visit to meet with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, who has built a stake of 13 percent in Uber, worth about $9.8 billion. The conversation during the meeting focused on the ride-hailing giant’s blueprint for growth.

“If I’m in Japan, you can bet that I’m going to see Masa,” Khosrowshahi said. “Masa is really focused on where we are taking our business three years and beyond from now.”

Son is in the process of raising money for a second $100 billion Vision Fund; one question is what assets he might seek to sell to finance SoftBank’s portion of another investment fund. Son raised $28 billion for the first fund, in part, by selling down his lucrative stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

While Khosrowshahi declined to detail what he and Son discussed, the takeaway is that SoftBank’s commitment to Uber is for the long term. Takeaki Nukii, a spokesman for SoftBank, couldn’t immediately comment on the subject.

“Masa and I, we talk about growth,” Khosrowshahi said. “We don’t talk about exit.”

(Source: JT)

Hit the mute button: Why everyone is trying to silence the outside world

Uber is trialling a feature that allows customers to stop their drivers from talking. But there’s growing evidence that cutting ourselves off like this isn’t healthy

The mute button was invented in 1956 by Robert Adler, an Austrian-born engineer working for the Zenith Radio Corporation in Chicago. It was one of the four buttons on his Space Command 400, the first commercially viable TV remote control. The other three buttons – on/off, channel up and channel down – might have seemed more vital, but Adler’s boss, Eugene F McDonald, a former naval intelligence officer who was nicknamed “The Commander”, had insisted on mute.

“He hated commercials,” Adler recalled in 1987. McDonald feared these constant intrusions would kill the new medium of TV. So Zenith boasted that the mute button would allow viewers to “shut off the sound of long, annoying commercials”.

Still, McDonald couldn’t have predicted the pop-up ad, petrol pumps trying to sell you nachos or the ravages of the distraction economy. It is only now, in an age of incessant interruption, that we are beginning to grasp muting’s full potential – not only when it comes to our gadgets, but in real life, too.

 Illustration: Mark Long

Last month, the taxi company Uber began trialling a suite of new features for users of its Exec service – including a button you can activate if you want to mute your driver. “Quiet preferred” is the euphemism Uber is using (you can also toggle it to “happy to chat” – lucky driver). But it appears to bring the dream of being able to choose who and what we listen to a step closer.

“From a driver’s perspective, it’s quite rude,” an Uber driver from east London tells me. “And offensive, to be honest. It’s like saying: ‘Shut up.’ It says a lot about Uber.” Uber claims it is responding to concerns from customers that drivers will give them low star ratings if they don’t want to chat; drivers meanwhile often fear entering into conversations with passengers for the same reason.

But let’s be honest: who among us hasn’t fantasised about being able to mute an annoying colleague, a screaming toddler or an over-friendly waiter? Mute promises a snake-free garden, a world where you can curate your content and silence dissent. And it is proving irresistible online.

Twitter introduced a mute function in 2014 and it has proved to be the social network’s most popular feature, a sort of automatic talk-to-the-hand. Instead of “blocking” someone objectionable (which they will know about) you can now discreetly “mute” them (which they won’t know about). Part of the appeal is the thought of trolls screaming and @-ing and wondering why you’re not replying. Twitter followed it up with a subject-based mute feature in 2017: so, if you don’t want to hear about Love Island, or Terfs, or the Champions League final, or Dominic Raab, for ever if need be, you don’t have to. If you want a glimpse of happy Twitter, type “mute button” into the search box: “Just wanna thank my ‘mute’ button for never giving up on me <3”; “Mute button is top 10 most powerful things in the universe”; “I thank @instagram for creating their mute posts and story buttons” etc.

Instagram added its own mute function last year, inspired by what it called “complex social dynamics”. Now you can avoid your friend’s nauseating Ibiza selfies and tasting menu stories without fear of causing offence. “I’m happy for my friends who are achieving great things, but Instagram makes it too easy to start getting bitter about why that’s not me,” one muter explained. “I’m looking forward to living in a self-imposed creative bubble for a little while.”

The clinical psychologist Paul Gilbert, author of Living Like Crazy, sees such responses in Jungian terms. “We’re becoming more persona-dominated,” he says. “We all put on an act about how people want to see and hear us. We do it all the time on social media.” For him, the Uber shush feature is a welcome chance for us to rest those personas for a few minutes. “Human beings evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups where everyone knew one another,” he says. “We aren’t necessarily adapted to be interacting with strangers all the time. People find it incredibly tiring. At least in a taxi, you have an opportunity to sit and be quiet.”

Well, yes, that is true. But what I find disturbing about the Uber silence feature is precisely that it cuts off any possibility of human connection. It is a way of automating a function that we might once have negotiated in human language. The Uber driver points out that it’s not hard for him to gauge who might be up for a chat and who isn’t. “You say: ‘What’s your name? Where are you going?’ And the way they respond is a fairly clear indication of whether they want to talk or not. Most people have their earphones on anyway. I usually have my Bluetooth earphone in too.”

A lot of the time, he is plugged into Telegram, the Russian-designed messaging app that functions a bit like an aural WhatsApp. “There are groups with about 200 drivers on Telegram – they’ll report what’s happening in real time. If you see an accident, you can report it to the group.” Otherwise, it’s “audiobooks, lectures, radio, podcasts, educational stuff. If I want to know something about anything, I’ll download it when I’m home and listen to that.”

But you could see that this retreat into our own discrete sound worlds is its own form of muting. Looking around the office in which I am typing these words, at least half of my co-workers are wearing earphones or headphones, and the younger they are, the more likely they are to be plugged in – or out.

The wider trend is known as the “privatisation of auditory space”, says Dr Tom Rice, a lecturer in sonic anthropology at Exeter University. “It’s often said in sound studies that we don’t have earlids. We don’t have any control over what drips into our ears and collects in them. Earphones are the closest we have to that.”

It is generally accepted that our audio environment is becoming more cluttered – even at home, since our microwaves and washing machines are now more likely to bleep at us (and, in some cases, talk to us). But most people do not mute the world because they find it overwhelming or confusing. “It’s also that they consider it boring,” says Rice. “People will often think that the sounds that they’re exposed to aren’t worth listening to.” The dawn chorus, after all, is famously not what it was, and general human patter is being drowned out by pneumatic drills, lorries and Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl blasting out of the supermarket public address system.

“When we conduct surveys about modern life and ask people what the biggest irritants of modern life are, ‘unwanted music or sound’ is usually in the top five,” says Dr Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal and author of The Organised Mind. This has a lot to do with the way our hearing system works. “Compare it with vision. When you look at an object, it appears to be out there in the world. But sounds, for most of us, feel like they’re emanating from within our heads. It makes them more intimate and more intrusive.

“In the best case, you can say headphones are a way to gain control of your environment,” he adds. It was striking, when Spotify users shared their most-played songs at the end of 2019, how many of the titles included “waves” or “rain noise”, suggesting that many listeners simply wanted to block distractions. “But the worst case,” Levitin says, “is that young people are listening to music and thinking that they can increase their concentration and performance that way. There are thousands of studies that show that listening to music is incredibly bad for your concentration. It’s just more enjoyable.”

 Illustration: Mark Long

Meanwhile, our capacity to tune out whatever we want is increasingly catching up with our desire to do just that. “Hearables” are now touted the new “wearables” in Silicon Valley. Amazon, Apple and Google are all working on in-ear technology. The start-up Doppler Labs has developed products that promise to cancel out background noise, amplify the voices of particular speakers and even provide live, real-time, Babel fish-like translation. We often imagine a virtual-reality future will involve some sort of interface over our eyes, but it might just as easily work through our ears. Soon we might literally be able to mute people we don’t want to hear.

But who knows what else will be silenced? “The argument is that this is damaging to the quality of public space and to the social fabric – we all just become atomised individuals,” says Rice. If we are listening to podcasts or music or white noise all the time, we are removing ourselves from society and the chance to interact, help, experience delight.

“I personally don’t have much against earphones and I think they can be fantastically useful and enriching of one’s auditory life,” says Rice. “But I do think it’s possible to get value out of your sound environment by paying attention to it.” One way is by focusing on your sound diet. “Can you isolate five sounds in your everyday environment that you value and enjoy and that enrich your life? The way the sink at work gurgles when you turn off the tap, a fragment of birdsong, wind in the trees, footsteps echoing under a bridge … As well as drawing our attention to specific sounds, an exercise such as this encourages us to think about our sound environment more generally, and about which sounds we want more – and less – of in our lives.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Airbnb and Uber woes show Japan does not share easily

With thousands of Airbnb reservations scrapped and Uber reduced to delivering food, life is hard in Japan for the giants of the sharing economy: They’re stuck between tough regulation and popular suspicion.

Japan may be the world’s third-largest economy and a high-tech hub but it has been surprisingly slow to warm up to the sharing economy that has disrupted markets across the globe.

According to 2016 figures compiled by research institute Yano the sharing economy accounted for ¥50 billion ($455 million) in Japan.

While that’s a 26 percent year-on-year rise, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the Europe, U.S. and China markets, which are worth tens to hundreds of billions of dollars.

This is partly due to confusion among the public about what the sharing economy is: only 2.7 percent of the population are familiar with the concept according to a 2017 survey by PwC professional services firm.

Strict local regulations have also held back the sector — as flat-sharing firm Airbnb found out recently to its chagrin.

On June 15, a new law came into effect that sought to regulate the short-term rental sector.

Although welcomed by Airbnb as a way to clear up the legal gray zone in which it has been operating, the new law has become somewhat of a double-edged sword, with thousands of owners forced to cast off property after failing to comply with the new requirements.

“This stinks — and that’s an understatement,” fumed Airbnb as it announced it was canceling thousands of reservations with owners who had failed to obtain a registration number by June 15.

In addition, the law prevents owners from renting out properties for more than 180 nights per year and local authorities can impose further restrictions.

In Kyoto for example, the tourist-magnet city sees residential area rentals are only allowed between mid-January and mid-March, when there’s a slump in tourism.

A man delivering an order by bicycle for meal-delivery service UberEATS in Tokyo's Shibuya shopping district on June 14. | AFP-JIJI

Such restrictions are in effect choking the sector, says Hiroyuki Kishi, a former trade ministry official and now professor at Tokyo’s Keio University.

“Vested interests are so strong in Japan,” he told AFP, regretting that such measures are coming into force “only two years before the Olympic Games” when Japan hopes to welcome 40 million tourists.

For Airbnb, the laws seek to protect the hotel industry and ryokans — traditional Japanese inns — whereas the taxi lobby has made it difficult for ride-sharing app Uber to set up shop in Japan.

“To promote the sharing economy, we have to loosen regulations” to allow new players to enter the market, said Kishi.

He believes that despite the economical reform efforts of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the government has “no intention” of opening up the sector “for fear of a backlash in sectors which have enjoyed a monopoly until now.”

Sharing economy firms have faced pushback elsewhere too, with Uber being accused of skirting regulations and making long-standing jobs obsolete, and Airbnb criticized for pushing up prices and transforming residential areas in many popular tourist destinations.

Takashi Sabetto, from an association that aims to promote the sharing economy, said in Japan “public opinion is very much against services like Airbnb and Uber.”

“We have tried to change this mentality but it is very difficult. It takes time,” added Sabetto.

One reason is that “Japanese are very protective of their privacy.”

The culture of sharing is not ingrained in society and — in the case of Airbnb — they do not like the noise and security risk caused by a procession of tourists in their backyard, he said.

In addition, unlike in many developed economies, the quality of service is very high in Japan. Hailing a taxi in a major city rarely takes more than a few seconds, lowering demand for Uber-type services.

Despite this bleak picture, there are some successes, notes Sabetto, with younger generations showing “a greater interest” in the sharing economy.

Car- and bike-sharing schemes are taking off and meal delivery service UberEATS has been a hit in Tokyo since arriving in 2016.

But local startups struggle to stay financially afloat, Sabetto said, in a country that tends to pride “monozukuri” — or craftsmanship — above innovation.

Some firms are moving away from the cities into the countryside, where a steady trend of depopulation has made the sharing economy more attractive.

Uber last month said it would launch a pilot program this summer to hook up tourists and residents with available drivers in the western Awaji island.

But Sabetto said a change in culture was needed for the sharing economy to really take root.

“I would like foreigners that are aware of the sharing economy to make their voice heard more to change the situation,” he said.

(Source: JT)

The lettings club where tenants are fined £90 for leaving dirty dishes

Rent from Lifestyle Club London and you are a ‘member’ … and that’s a whole new grey area

It was when Paolo Sanchez* needed to find affordable accommodation in London that he was lured by a Facebook ad offering a large, attractive room for a reasonable rate. Cleaning, utilities, broadband and council tax were thrown in. He applied, and moved into a eight-bedroom house-share in Hackney for £900 a month. Only then did he realise what he had let himself in for.

“The agent can come and go without notice and make a judgment on how tidy it is and, if they don’t like it, can fine all the occupants,” he says. “Three times people have been in our property. Most worrying, they can terminate the contract at any point giving us seven days to move out.”

The company, Lifestyle Club London, is a lettings agency calling itself a “membership club”. Those who sign up are, it claims, able to make the property they choose a principal residence for as long as they wish, or move between any other of its properties with 24 hours’ notice.

Instead of a deposit, it requires a nonrefundable £200 joining fee and a refundable membership fee, worth one month’s rent, which is, essentially, a deposit. “Members” then pay a monthly rate. The company compares itself to gig-economy firms such as Airbnb and Uber, which skirt around the usual rules to offer flexibility.

The catch is hidden in the terms and conditions, which make extraordinary reading. Tenants, or “members”, must maintain and replace white goods at their own expense and leave them in situ when they leave. If they require extra furniture they must pay half the cost and leave it for club use. Club staff are entitled to inspect rooms unannounced at any time and if “gross breaches” are identified the membership fee is withheld. “Gross breaches” can include the inevitable consequences of a large household. Sanchez, 22, and his eight housemates were fined £90 for leaving dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and £225 for removing graphic print-outs taped to the fridge warning of penalties for drug taking and dirty kitchens.

“We’re struggling to understand our position,” he says. “They have the power to create new fines essentially from nothing, and when one of the housemates moved out, the club refused to return his £600 deposit. We fear they intend to do that with all of us.”

Ever since the 1977 Protection from Eviction Act, landlords and lettings agents have sought ways around laws enshrining the rights of tenants. Many blur the legal distinction between “assured shorthold tenants”, who have exclusive rights to the accommodation and cannot be evicted without a court order, and “licensees” who typically occupy a hostel run by a registered social landlord, a holiday let or spare bedroom in a family home. They have fewer legal rights and can be evicted without a court order.

Lifestyle Club London appears to be an example of a lettings agent exploiting a legal grey area. Set up last August by 30-year-old Estonian Tiina Lehtla with capital assets of just £1, it seeks to imply its “members” are licensees, rather than tenants. Its Companies House registration – Lifestyle Club LSC Ltd – says it operates “housing association” real estate. But it is not a registered housing association and its website invites private landlords to add properties to its portfolio.

The penalties, right to unannounced access, “membership fee” and “monthly contributions” rather than rent create the impression residents do not have exclusive rights over the rooms they rent. At a stroke, this removes any of the rights of an assured shorthold tenancy, such as government-backed deposit protection and protection from eviction.

In one door and out the other: but the promise of more ‘flexible’ renting, without the ‘burden’ of a tenancy agreement, comes at a cost Photograph: Photography taken by Mario Gutiérrez./Getty Images

According to Robert Bolwell, a specialist in landlord and tenant law with Dutton Gregory LLP: “Even if someone renting a room does not have a formal tenancy agreement, since Lifestyle Club LSC is not a registered social landlord, it is difficult to see how the company can avoid the provisions of the Protection from Eviction Act and simply terminate their right to accommodation. The courts have long said that one should not look at labels when determining the nature of a contract. If the arrangement looks like a tenancy and smells like a tenancy, you may well have a ‘tenancy’, no matter what a landlord decides to call the arrangement.”

Lifestyle Club London trades from an address in the London borough of Islington. Last August, Islington trading standards successfully prosecuted a lettings agent, Green Live, for stating two of its tenants were “licensees” and refusing to register their deposits with a protected scheme, or allow them to challenge an eviction notice.

In what is thought to be the first case of its kind in the country, the agent was fined £11,000 under the Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 for issuing two sham licences. Trading standards says it is aware of Lifestyle Club London, but declines to confirm whether it is investigating.

Lifestyle Club London says that the flexibility it offers members outweighs what it admits are “disadvantages”. “It is true that under our agreements you are not under statutory protections, but on the other side you have much more flexibility.

“You can upgrade, downgrade, move in and out or relocate between club properties on your own terms and with very short notice without having the liability of a tenancy agreement. We simply came up with a new concept which some might call questionable but, likewise, so could the practices of Airbnb and Uber.”

It claims that members share properties with a resident landlord, which makes them licensees. Sanchez says there is not one in his house. Moreover, he says his requests to transfer to another club property have been stalled and there are no properties listed on the website or anywhere else, for “members” to choose from.

According to housing charity Shelter, Sanchez’s predicament is symptomatic of an overheated property market and official inertia has left young people on tight budgets particularly vulnerable.

Lifestyle Club London may not be breaking the law but mayor Sadiq Khan has committed to cracking down on lettings agents who do, last year releasing a “rogue landlord and agent checker” to name and shame private landlords and letting agents who have been prosecuted or fined.

Legislation in 2014 made it mandatory for lettings agents and property management firms to register with an approved arbitration scheme. Lifestyle Club London directs complainants to the Shared Accommodation Providers Association, a dormant company whose phone number and email address are out of service.

However, it’s also signed up to the officially approved Property Redress Scheme (PRS) which can expel members who do not comply with its rulings when a complaint is upheld. But it does not check their terms and conditions comply with its code of practice before accepting their membership. An expelled company can no longer trade legitimately.

Sanchez and his housemates can complain to PRS, but ultimately their contract would have to be tested in court. As he says: “Lifestyle Club holds all the cards. I’m actually happy with the accommodation, but the instability is very worrying.

“Many of us are students and to lose our home and a month’s rent would leave us struggling to survive.”

*His name has been changed

(Source: The Guardian)

Uber is copying the bike-sharing model that brought chaos to cities in China

Uber is adopting a sharing model that has swept Chinese cities, often to the annoyance of pedestrians and city planners, and that has made its way to US cities in the last six months.

According to a blog post Thursday (Jan. 31), Uber is offering the pilot dockless bike rental service to a select group of users in San Francisco, via a partnership with Jump Bikes, (formerly known as Social Bicycle), a company that powers bike-share schemes all over the US. Unlike most of the services from Jump Bikes and Motivate (which powers the docked bike program in New York and other cities), Uber and Jump are offering electric bicycles, and they don’t need to be dropped off at specific parking stations

Unlike most of the services from Jump and Motivate (which powers the docked bike program in New York and other cities), Uber and Jump are offering electric bicycles, and they don’t need to be dropped off at specific parking stations.

Opening the app and going to the “Bike” icon will unveil a map of nearby bicycles. Users can unlock a bike with a pin number that Uber sends. The company is charging $2 per minute. “Once the ride is complete, you can lock the bike to any public rack in the bike zone shown on the app’s map,” writes Uber’s head of policy and transportation research in another post.

That’s wishful thinking.

Uber is actually late to dockless bike-sharing, a business model pioneered in China. Throughout 2016 and 2017, dozens of startups filled Chinese city streets with bikes that users could unlock with their smartphones, ride for a few yuan per minute, and park anywhere they pleased. A funding war created two billion-dollar companies—Mobike and Ofo—and many more casualties. Meanwhile, the companies’ “park-anywhere” policy led to bikes piling up in sidewalks, office parks, and ditches, where they’d been either abandoned or confiscated (though they’ve introduced policies to encourage riders to park them in high-traffic locations).

Shared bikes become "zombie" bikes: Thousands of shared-bikes left unused on open space in Yinchuan, NW China, due to cold weather pic.twitter.com/VFWz0aISnU

— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) January 19, 2018

Lots of people have posted pictures of piles of shared bikes in #China but I haven’t yet so I figured I should join the club. Seen in random back alley near city center pic.twitter.com/v7WKgiOrKM

— Deathblade (@deathbladeISSTH) January 11, 2018

In the United States, after a cameo appearance at Austin, Texas’s SWSW festival, dockless bike rental made proper city street debuts last summer, as Spin and LimeBike started up in Seattle (both of them already offer services in San Francisco). In the fall, Mobike and Ofo each expanded to the US, beginning with Washington, D.C. and Dallas, respectively. Just like in China, consumers and regulators are starting to complain about pile-ups and obstructions. In Dallas, which particularly embraced dockless bike-sharing and where Ofo alone now has some 10,000 bikes, City Hall has called on bike companies to mend their ways and is contemplating rules.

@limebike your bikes at the corner of Mangum and Seminary are impeding the sidewalk. pic.twitter.com/05Tbt4ymZH

— Ross Grady (@rossgrady) February 1, 2018

Favorite place I’ve seen a @limebike in #Dallas #theygrowontrees pic.twitter.com/nAVsi5JaIq

— Vincent Coronado (@vcoronado7) January 31, 2018

I gotta think the answer to this question is the @Mobike next to the upside down Mercury at Logan Circle. #bikeDC https://t.co/Bd5AWEtCZ5

— Dockless Bikeshare Is The Devil (@DocklessB) January 30, 2018

Uber did not reply immediately to questions about how it will ensure its bikes are parked in public racks.

Uber’s move follows a similar announcement from Didi, its former Chinese nemesis (arguably, it continues to be an arch-rival with investments in overseas Uber competitors). In January, the Chinese company launched a bike-sharing service inside its app that lets users ride vehicles from Ofo and Bluegogo, the once number-three player that Didi took under its wing.

It’s not clear if dockless bike-sharing is a winning business model, given the slim margins and logistical headaches. But to some degree, Didi and Uber’s near-simultaneous entry into the sector validates the trend. For Didi, the company is reportedly losing rides to bike-sharing (paywall), as Chinese consumers opt to hop on the nearest Mobike for a short-distance trip rather than hail a car. As bike-sharing spreads across the United States, Uber probably fears the same.

(Source: Quartz)

The countries that have banned Uber

As TFL confirms it will not renew the popular taxi app's London licence come the end of September, here's a list of other places where it's been banned: 

Uber is one of the world’s most popular apps, but it's not without controversy. Transport for London announced on Friday that the ride hailing app's private hire licence will not be renewed after 30 September, as Uber "demonstrate[s] a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications".

This is just one of many legal battles, regulatory disagreements and driver strikes that have taken place across the globe, and more than one country has outright banned the leading taxi app.

Here is a comprehensive list of all of the places you won't be able to order an Uber on your next trip away.

Europe
Bulgaria
Uber suspended services after being accused of “unfair trade practices”. The chairperson of the transport committee, Grozdan Karadzhov said that if Uber wants to return to the Bulgarian market, it will have to meet the minimum requirements of legislation and register as a taxi service.

Denmark
Taxi metres have been made mandatory for Danish taxi drivers, meaning Uber was forced to pull out of the market this year after operating there since 2014.

Italy
Uber will soon be completely banned from the country, after its business practices were found to “constitute unfair competition”. Uber's services have been blocked, and it is not allowed to advertise. The company is permitted to continue operating until a final court ruling is made, but that time will soon run out.

Hungary
The Hungarian government passed legislation saying that Uber drivers “breach[ed] regulations other taxi firms must adhere to” after allowing them to operate for two and a half years. The new law permits the Hungarian national communications authority to block internet access to "illegal dispatcher services".

Uber has also faced suspensions in Finland, France, Spain and the Netherlands, primarily over its UberPOP service. Barcelona’s main taxi operator accused the company of running an illegal taxi service and is currently awaiting a ruling from the European Court of Justice.

USA
Austin, Texas
The company pulled operations from the Texas city after being told to fingerprint and background check all prospective and current drivers, which it said did nothing to improve safety and penalised minorities.

Alaska
Uber operated for six months in the state, before pulling out over a dispute as to whether drivers were independent contractors or registered taxi drivers – which would mean they are entitled to workers' compensation insurance. Uber paid a $77,925 (£60,000) fine to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development over the dispute, before abandoning the Alaskan market. New legislation could change that, but for now the state remains Uber-less.

Uber also faced a huge backlash in the US following Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, when drivers didn’t adhere to a taxi strike in New York City aimed to show solidarity to those affected. #DeleteUber trended worldwide, and hundreds of users deleted the app. Its main competitor, Lyft, capitalised on this boycott by donating $1m (£775,000) to the American Civil Liberties Union and issuing a statement condemning the Muslim ban.

Canada
Vancouver, British Columbia
Ride share apps are not legal in Vancouver. The Liberal Party promised earlier in the year to move forward with legalisation and make Uber possible in the city by Christmas. Transport Minister Todd Stone said: “We think we are striking a balance between what the vast majority of British Columbians want…all the while…respect[ing] the industry that’s been there for so many generations and get this right to protect the jobs that already exist.”

Asia
China
The company was losing huge amounts of money in the Chinese market, and it was bought out by Chinese competitor Didi Chuxing after allegedly losing billions of dollars.

Taiwan
Services were suspended after Uber faced millions of dollars' worth of fines by the government. However, it has reached an agreement to use rental car agencies on the ground under the Uber brand, but the service remains limited.

Australia 
Northern Territory
The territory has completely banned Uber after refusing to change the law to accommodate the app's legality. It will allegedly re-evaluate this at a later date but, for now, Uber remains out in the cold.

(Source: Independent)

Uber loses its license in London

Ride hailing app private hire licence will not be renewed after 30 September. TfL said Uber's approach and conduct 'demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications'.

Transport for London on Friday announced that it was not renewing Uber’s licence to operate in the city dealing a sharp blow to the ride hailing app, tens of thousands of UK-based drivers and a sprawling customer base.

In a damning statement, the transport authority said that its regulation of London's taxi and private hire trades is designed to ensure passenger safety.

The California-based company, that was founded just over eight years ago, has been under intense fire from
a growing army of critics in the UK

It said that private hire operators must meet rigorous regulations and that it had concluded that "Uber London Limited is not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator licence".

TfL said that it considers that Uber's approach and conduct “demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications”.

Its concerns relate to Uber’s approach to reporting serious criminal offences and its approach to how medical certificates are obtained, among other things.

The current licence expires on 30 September. Uber can appeal the decision within 21 days and will be able to continue to operate until that appeal process has been exhausted.

TfL announced its decision on Twitter.

Transport for London 

✔@TfL

TfL has today informed Uber that it will not be issued with a private hire operator licence.

1:00 PM - Sep 22, 2017

•  884884 Replies
 
•  4,4374,437 Retweets
 
•  2,4632,463 likes

London mayor Sadiq Khan "fully supports" TfL's move to pull Uber's license. Here's his statement:

Uber has responded to Transport for London's announcement that it will not renew the company's licence to operate in the UK capital.

In a statement, Uber said that banning its operations in London would, "show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers.” Uber vowed to challenge the ruling. It has 21 days to lodge an appeal.

Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, said: “3.5 million Londoners who use our app, and more than 40,000 licensed drivers who rely on Uber to make a living, will be astounded by this decision.

“By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport.

“To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts.

Brits Abroad Risk Losing Wealth – Here’s Why
Abbey Wealth
Play this for 1 minute and see why everyone is addicted
Throne: Free Online Game
These Are The 25 Most Evil People To Ever Live!
Petty and Posh
  by Taboola Sponsored Links
“Drivers who use Uber are licensed by Transport for London and have been through the same enhanced DBS background checks as black cab drivers."

Uber argued that its technology enhances rather than reduces safety. It said it had always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents and worked closely with the Metropolitan Police.

"As we have already told TfL, an independent review has found that ‘greyball’ has never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL," Mr Elvidge added.

Greyball is a controversial technology Uber used in the US that allowed it to operate in markets where it was not licensed by identifying and avoiding local officials. TfL cited it is as one of the reasons for not renewing Uber's licence, along with the company's approach to reporting criminal offences and obtaining medical certificates and obtaining criminal records checks.

The transport authority announced on Friday that it was not renewing Uber’s licence to operate in London, dealing a sharp blow to the ride hailing app, tens of thousands of UK-based drivers and a sprawling customer base. Uber's current licence runs out on 30 September but the company will allowed to continue to operate until the appeals process is concluded.

In a damning statement, the transport authority said that its regulation of London's taxi and private hire trades is designed to ensure passenger safety.

Private hire operators must meet rigorous regulations, and demonstrate that they do so, in order to operate, it said.  It also said that it must be satisfied that an operator is fit and proper to hold a licence.

TfL concluded that Uber does not meet these criteria.

There's no shortage of criticism over TfL's move this morning.

Fraser Nelson 

✔@FraserNelson

World over, approach to #Uber is a proxy for whether a gvt/city is on the side of the vested interests (the few) or consumers (the many).

1:33 PM - Sep 22, 2017

•  4646 Replies
 
•  170170 Retweets
 
•  248248 likes

The California-based company, that was founded just over eight years ago, has been under intense fire from a growing army of critics in the UK, who claim that it is unfairly skewing competition and that it has not done enough to crack down on incidents of violence involving its drivers.

The Licensed Taxi Drivers Association, which has been one of the most vocal critics of Uber in London, praised Friday's decision and said that TfL had put public safety first.

“Since it first came onto our streets Uber has broken the law, exploited its drivers and refused to take responsibility for the safety of passengers,” Steve McNamara, the General Secretary of the LTDA said.

“We expect Uber will again embark on a spurious legal challenge against the Mayor and TfL, and we will urge the court to uphold this decision. This immoral company has no place on London’s streets”.

The GMB Union dubbed the move as a “historic victory”.

“As a result of sustained pressure from drivers and the public, Uber has suffered yet another defeat - losing its license to operate in London,” Maria Ludkin, GMB’s legal director said.

“No company can be behave like it's above the law, and that includes Uber. No doubt other major cities will be looking at this decision and considering Uber’s future on their own streets,” she added.

London is one of Uber's most established markets and Friday’s decision comes at a critical time for the group. Its already battling a slew of legal cases and challenges in several US states and has been forced to quit countries including Denmark and Hungary.

In June, founder Travis Kananick resigned as from his role as chief executive officer in the face of shareholder outrage over company culture.

Responding to Friday’s decision, Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, said that drivers and clients would be “astounded”.

“By wanting to ban our app from the capital Transport for London and the Mayor have caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice. If this decision stands, it will put more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work and deprive Londoners of a convenient and affordable form of transport,” he said.

“To defend the livelihoods of all those drivers, and the consumer choice of millions of Londoners who use our app, we intend to immediately challenge this in the courts.”

He said that drivers who use Uber are licensed by TfL and have been through the same background checks as black cab drivers.

“We have always followed TfL rules on reporting serious incidents and have a dedicated team who work closely with the Metropolitan Police.”

He said that Uber operates in more than 600 cities around the world, including more than 40 towns and cities here in the UK. This ban, Mr Elvidge said, "would show the world that, far from being open, London is closed to innovative companies who bring choice to consumers”.

One of TfL's concerns relates to Uber's use of secret software known as "greyball". The company built it to avoid regulators. Uber on Friday said that "greyball" had never been used or considered in the UK for the purposes cited by TfL.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan was among the supporters of the decision.

“All companies in London must play by the rules and adhere to the high standards we expect - particularly when it comes to the safety of customers,” he said. “It would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety and security.”

Wes Streeting MP, Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Taxis, called TfL’s decision "courageous” and said that it shows that “no company, however big and powerful, will be allowed to flout our laws and regulations or jeopardise Londoner's safety without facing serious consequences”.

“Uber has not shown itself to be a fit and proper operator. It stands accused by the Police of failing to properly handle serious allegations of rape and sexual assault of passengers. It had to be dragged through the courts to recognise its responsibility to provide even the most basic rights and protections to Uber drivers,” he said.

Smaller rival private hire operators welcomed the news too.

One called mytaxi, launched an instant promotion offering half-price rides "to undercut Uber on news that they are not fit and proper to operate".

“We believe that Uber’s business model is based on pumping large amounts of private equity money into maintaining artificially low prices in an attempt to drive out competition, in preparation for raising prices once it has gained a monopoly role in the market,” mytaxi’s UK general manager, Andy Batty, said.

Alternative taxi apps
Fortunately, there are several alternatives to the app, for the times you don't fancy walking, cycling or catching the train, Tube or a bus.

Gett
Gett works in much the same way as Uber, but without the surge pricing, and is available on both iOS and Android. As well as London, you can also use it in Birmingham, Coventry, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

MyTaxi
MyTaxi, better known as Hailo to many, has already responded to the news by offering 50 per cent off fares. You can also save £10 on your first trip with the code 'myfirstmytaxi'. It's available on both iOS and Android.

Addison Lee
Addison Lee has been around for years, and made huge changes to its service in order to keep up with Uber. Unfortunately, it's widely regarded as a rather expensive alternative. It's also available on both iOS and Android, though you can make bookings on the web too.

Kabbee
Kabbee also offers fixed prices, and claims its minicabs are 65 per cent cheaper than traditional black cabs. It's available on both iOS and Android.

Taxify
Taxify launched in London earlier this month, but had to suspend operations within days. It will be thrilled with the timing of TfL’s announcement, but has a battle of its own in its hands if it's to start operating in the capital again. As well as paying for rides through the app, you can also use cash or a credit or debit card. It’s available on both iOS and Android.

(Source: Independent)