Uber is best known as an app that dispatches limos, black cars, or regular drivers in regular cars to wherever you and your smartphone are, but has a less-known feature called UberTaxi. In Germany, where the company and taxi drivers are in a legal fight over whether the company should be allowed to compete with licensed taxis, the company is trying something new: hiring taxi drivers.
Well, that’s not exactly right. UberTaxi already exists in other cities with lots of taxi drivers, like London and New York. The service lets taxi drivers receive mobile hails during time that they’d normally just be sitting around waiting for a fare. What users get out of it is the opportunity to hail a cab, slightly cheaper.
The company will try UberTaxi in Berlin and Hamburg, and expand it to other cities if the test works out.
When the country’s taxi drivers brought a lawsuit against Uber, the court ruled that the UberBlack car-ordering service didn’t fit current taxi or limo regulations, and the low-cost UberPop service, which lets ordinary citizens drive people around for extra cash, isn’t even close to meeting the safety requirements normally asked of taxi drivers.
Uber to use regular taxi drivers in Germany [Reuters]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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