Details emerged today about Uber's plan, code-named "Operation Slog," to recruit drivers away from rival car transport company Lyft. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick took to Twitter to defend himself after several Valley bigwigs slammed his tactics.
Uber's latest plan involves having Uber employees order Lyft rides from burner phones, pretending to be normal riders, according to documents obtained by The Verge. Then they spend the ride trying to recruit the driver.
Previously, Lyft accused Uber of calling and then canceling more than 5,000 rides on its service, costing its drivers time and money.
"Would it be controversial if we got in taxis and recruited taxi drivers and paid for the ride?"Kalanick tweeted, adding, "to be clear, we are paying for the rides, these are independent contractors working for multiple co's."
Both services are popular in San Francisco. News of the tactics, reported by the Verge, spread quickly on Twitter where all sorts of Valley bigwigs jumped in with opinions on it.
Jason Fried, founder & CEO at Basecamp (formerly known as 37signals) started the debate by taking Uber to task. In a series of tweets we've condensed that begin here, Fried tweeted:
I *understand* the @uber recruiting angle. A $10 ride is the cheapest way to get in front of a strong lead/candidate…
…it's just more about how it all /feels/. Like someone walking into your physical office, pulling up a chair, and recruiting your people…
…you'd surely kick them out of your office. You might even call the cops if they didn't leave…
…It doesn't matter if they left a $10 bill in the tip jar on their way out.
Regardless, I still have deep respect for @uber and @travisk. I love the product. I'm a regular customer. What they've built is amazing…
…and we're all entitled to a handful of bumps in the road when building our businesses… Just hope they do more of the great stuff.
That caused Kalanick to reply and also caused Fried's cofounder and CTO of Basecamp, David Heinemeierhansson (@dhh), to jump in. (Heinemeierhansson is famous in the tech world for inventing a super popular Web programing language called Ruby on Rails.)
Uber cofounder and CEO Travis Kalanick, 38, is prone to trash-talking and tantrums, but his unhinged confidence and competitiveness are part of what makes him such a brilliant entrepreneur. His car service company was valued at $18 billion in June and today operates in 128 cities across 45 countries.
Before Kalanick was Silicon Valley royalty — his recent hot streak lands him at No. 8 onBusiness Insider's 2014 list of the Sexiest CEOs— he was a young, wide-eyed entrepreneur struggling to catch a break.
As a computer engineering student at UCLA, Kalanick joined Michael Todd and Vince Busam's side project Scour, a file-sharing service that predated Napster. He dropped out of school in 1998 to become a full-time employee, and the company took off.
But, even though it soon attracted the attention of millions of users, it also attracted the attention of power players in the entertainment industry. Together they sued Scour for a whopping $250 billion, a dramatic gesture serving as a demand to cease operation. The team took the threat seriously and filed bankruptcy in 2000 to avoid a lawsuit.
Todd and Kalanick launched another file-sharing company, Red Swoosh, staffed by Scour's former engineering team. Its services were legal, but some of its practices were not. The IRS discovered that Red Swoosh had been withholding taxes from employees' paychecks, which Kalanick denies having prior knowledge of. The founders had to pay a $110,000 IRS bill or else face jail time.
Kalanick was able to acquire sufficient funding, but the incident led to a falling out between him and Todd. Kalanick took charge of the company until the server giant Akamai bought Red Swoosh in 2007 for $19 million.
A newly minted millionaire, Kalanick wasted no time spending money on a new house, lavish trips, and investments in startups. He also started hanging out with former Google employee Chris Sacca, who is now a billionaire investor and Uber funder, and his friends, including Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams.
Then, at the 2008 LeWeb tech conference, he had a fateful conversation with StumbleUpon founder Garrett Camp. Camp told him about his idea for a luxury car service that was convenient and didn't cost $800 for a ride, a price he once paid. Kalanick was in, and the two started UberCab the next year.
As their vision evolved, they changed what was essentially a limousine service into an on-demand cab alternative accessible through a smartphone app. They secured $1.25 million in seed funding and launched as Uber in San Francisco in 2010. In December of that year, Kalanick became CEO.
Kalanick's relentless personality has pushed Uber to enter and thrive in city after city, despite the opposition of taxi companies and other obstacles. In the past few years, Uber has dealt with lawsuits, strikes, and other controversies from some of its drivers, who are private contractors rather than full-time employees. It has also seen the rise of competitors like Lyft.
Legendary investor Mark Cuban, a former Uber investor himself, told Business Insider's Alyson Shontell for her in-depth profile on Kalanick that "Travis is smart. Busts his ass and is a true entrepreneur. Can't be much more complimentary than that."
Uber is a massive company that's now valued at $18 billion, likely making its CEO Travis Kalanick a billionaire.
But that wasn't always the case.
Uber was the third in a series of startups Kalanick had helped get off the ground and the first that has been truly successful.
It took Kalanick years to get where he is now. At one point before Uber even existed, Kalanick was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sleeping in his parents' house.
This is the story of how Travis Kalanick built Uber's empire.
Kalanick grew up in Northridge, California, a suburb outside Los Angeles. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a spy.
However, Kalanick would eventually follow in the entrepreneurial footsteps of his mom, a retail advertiser. He went door-to-door, selling knives for Cutco as a youngster. He started his first business at age 18, an SAT-prep course called New Way Academy.
"[T]he car-booking company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, is seeking a higher valuation than the $17 billion Uber got," during its last raise, Bloomberg's Serena Saitto reported.
Ever since I moved back to New York from Los Angeles several months ago, I've become an avid Uber user. There's no question in my mind that Kalanick and his team have created a great service. Business Insider has been diligent about investigating the issues that have arisen with the company. But the bottom line for me is that I hope Uber sticks around — although I don't want the traditional taxi industry to go away.
However, my extremely positive experiences with the company and Kalanick's ideas about valuations are different stories.
It could be that Uber's opponents aren't as much a threat to its existence as are its goals for rapid expansion. It's been noted that Uber's game plan is to effectively ignore whatever legal challenges may eventually be thrown at it in a quest to get big fast and drive its competition out of the game. On the plus side, Uber has defined a need for an alternative to taxis and created a viable market for entrepreneurs who want to do likewise.
On the negative side, I wouldn't want to be going up against Uber. Frankly, Kalanick seems almost like a businessman of the old school — he relishes a good fight and wants to win, all the time, every time.
So if Bloomberg's reporting is accurate and Uber is pursuing another billion in investment just a few months after taking $1.2 billion, you have to see where the bets are being placed. In fact, Uber investors are wagering that the company will overcome entrenched resistance to its objectives.
Silicon Valley startups have taken a lot of money and satisfied investors in the past — just look at Facebook. But Facebook wasn't under threat of legal action for its business model, nor was it facing organized protests from critics. Uber is a technology company, but it operates in the rough-and-tumble world of big cities, established unions, and the very competitive taxi/car service industry.
There's another factor: the sheer force of Uber's disruption. A lot of tech companies call themselves "disruptive," or say that they're engaged in "disruptive innovation," but what they really are is just plain innovative, in both a beneficial and creative sense.
They're showing a different and better way of doing things, but at the same time they're creating new platforms, new ways to connect — and are removing "friction" from mundane tasks, like paying bills or filing taxes.
Uber is doing some of that, too, but it's also drastically re-inventing the way that an important aspect of urban mobility actually works.
The thing is, when you really and truly disrupt established industries, you make enemies. You take their business away, rather than demonstrating a benignly new and different way of doing something that can function alongside the old industry. Or only invalidate the old industry in slow motion, giving everyone who can read the writing on the wall plenty of time to find something else to do.
The implication of another billion in investment is that Uber is going to overcome its many challenges and pay off big time at some not-too-distant point. But that implies that all of Uber's enemies are going to surrender en masse. To a degree, anyone putting money into Uber now is betting that the company will become so pervasive — monopolistic, even — that the opposition will decide that resistance is futile.
Would you take that bet? Some sophisticated investors are.
Uber just goes to show you that real disruption is thrilling — but also scary, particularly if you're the one being disrupted.
Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick is one of the most polarizing figures in Silicon Valley.
Uber provides a fantastic service to its users. You push a button and a car comes to pick you up. And a company like Uber doesn't get to a $17 billion valuation without a great CEO.
But Kalanick has a reputation as an overly aggressive businessman. The Verge reported this summer that Uber had been sending its "brand ambassadors" undercover to recruit drivers from competing companies like Lyft.
San Francisco magazine recently sat down with Kalanick, and noted during his interview he was uncharacteristically mild-mannered.
During the magazine's cover shoot, according to San Francisco magazine's Ellen Cushing, Kalanick was concerned about his image, and made it clear he didn't want to look like a jerk.
Quietly but clearly, the CEO has launched something of an apology tour—tamping down the aggro “asshole named Taxi” rhetoric just a little, appearing contrite at conferences and industry events. (The story that you’re reading is in fact part of the company’s charm offensive: At the photo shoot for our cover, Kalanick repeatedly expressed concern about looking like an “asshole.”)
When you take a ride in an Uber vehicle, the first things you'll notice when you request a ride on the app are your driver's name, the make and model of your Uber ride, and your driver's rating out of five stars.
Uber's rating system goes both ways — after a ride, passengers rate their experience with their drivers, and drivers do the same with passengers.
In an interview with San Francisco magazine, Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick admitted that not even he has a perfect 5-star rating as a passenger.
From the story:
“I was at a 5 for a long time, then I had a string of 4 stars. I don’t know what happened. I think what happened was I was a little stressed at work. I was not as courteous as I should have been.”
Customers can see an Uber driver's rating when they use the app, but don't know their own rating, usually. Earlier this summer a hack was exposed that let you view your own Uber passenger rating, but it was quickly shut down by the company.
Uber employees allegedly warned San Francisco Magazine editor Ellen Cushing while she was researching a story on CEO Travis Kalanick that the company might look at her rider logs, the magazine reports.
The San Francisco Magazine editor said she had no evidence that Uber looked at her rider data, acknowledging that her sources might have simply been "overzealous" in their warnings. But her sources allegedly said it wouldn't be very hard to access the information.
Uber has posted a new privacy policy on its website that bans employees from accessing riders' trip data except "for a legitimate set of business purposes."
Another journalist says Uber employees warned her that Uber could look at her trip data, as she was researching a story about CEO Travis Kalanick. However, there's no evidence Uber actually did so.
Uber provided the following examples of "legitimate business purposes" for looking through trip data.
Supporting riders and drivers in order to solve problems brought to their attention by the Uber community.
Facilitating payment transactions for drivers.
Monitoring driver and rider accounts for fraudulent activity, including terminating fake accounts and following up on stolen credit card reports.
Reviewing specific rider or driver accounts in order to troubleshoot bugs.
Uber also said employee access to rider data is closely monitored and that employees who violate the company privacy policy are subject to "the possibility of termination and legal action."
There are many reasons to distrust Uber, but its Android privacy policies might not be one of them. In a post that blew up on Hacker News, one user called attention to the breadth of information that Uber collects from the Android app.
For what it's worth, we compared Uber's user permissions agreement to that of Lyft, its closest director competitor.
As you can see, the agreement differs only by one category. While Uber requests access to Wi-Fi, Lyft requires access to SMS. The other seven permissions categories are the same.
Here's a view peeking with the APK from the post that originally raised the red flag:
www.gironsec.com
"Maybe Uber [is] evil," the Android user writes. "Maybe Uber isn’t sending a bunch of data off to their collection servers for harvesting. Maybe I’m just paranoid."
Those things aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but given the broad permissions users sign off on in order to use mobile apps (both in iOS and Android), it's extremely difficult to know what happens with your data after you agree. Generally, apps don't hesitate to ask for a wide range of permissions "just in case." Android users agree to categories of permission, which may or may not be further illuminated by an individual app.
In Uber's case, the company is apparently preemptively worried enough about users worrying that it offers a standalone FAQ for permissions in Android. Here are those clarifications:
"Access Wi-Fi networks
Using local Wi-Fi networks helps us pinpoint your location and pick you up exactly where you are, even in places where your data service is weak or unavailable.
Call phone
Most of the time, there's no need to contact your driver. If you do need to, you can reach your driver at an anonymized phone number with a single tap.
Camera
We use your phone's camera to power Card.iosnapshot registration. Touch the camera icon on the payment screen to add your payment information by snapping a quick photo of your credit card - no typing required. You can also use your camera to add a picture to your account profile, which helps drivers recognize you.
Get accounts and credentials
This permission allows Android users to sign in and pay with one tap (using the Google Sign-In and Google Wallet services, respectively).
Read contacts
Three features in our app need access to your stored contacts. Share My ETA lets you text friends a link to your trip so they'll know exactly when you're arriving. Fare Split lets you share the cost of a ride with anyone in your phone book. Finally, you can share your Uber invite code via Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and more to earn free rides.
Write phone settings
We use this permission to save data and cache mapping vectors, which helps power our app in 45+ countries and make Uber the world's most reliable ride."
Over on the Next Web, Owen Williams blames Android's permission system for causing the privacy concerns, and looks under the hood himself: "Despite what some are claiming, there’s no evidence that Uber accesses any data on your phone other than that used explicitly for the purpose of getting you a ride, nor does it send any of your SMS’, images or other data off your phone."
Ultimately, nothing binds a company like Uber to be fully transparent with what it does with your data, so using an app that's implementing all of these different sensors and data streams is a matter of discretion. Even if Uber didn't have such a questionable privacy record, it's worth staying vigilant about everything you download—and if you aren't comfortable with that information being collected, don't agree to those terms and look elsewhere. After all, there are plenty of Ubers in the sea.
The government of India's capital territory has just banned the ride-sharing service Uber after a passenger reported that a driver raped her, according to the Deccan Chronicle.
Shiv Kumar Yadav, the Uber driver who has been accused of raping a young female passenger, is scheduled to appear in Indian court on Monday, AFP reports. The man was arrested for another sexual assault three years ago and was eventually acquitted of the crime, but he was still allowed to drive for Uber.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has said Indian systems lack a process to "to establish clear background checks,"according to the Deccan Chronicle.
Indian police are reportedly considering taking legal action against Uber, claiming the company hasn't run proper background checks.
Delhi's government said in a statement that the "Transport Department has banned all activities relating to providing any transport service by the www.Uber.com with immediate effect."
The woman who accused the Uber driver of rape said he dropped her off after he assaulted her and told her not to go to police. She reportedly took down the driver's number and snapped a photo of his car, according to AFP.
Uber recently raised more funding and is now valued at $40 billion.
Kalanick had earlier released this statement about the alleged rape:
What happened over the weekend in New Delhi is horrific. Our entire team's hearts go out to the victim of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and to support the victim and her family in her recovery.
We will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in their commercial transportation licensing programs. We will also partner closely with the groups who are leading the way on women’s safety here in New Delhi and around the country and invest in technology advances to help make New Delhi a safer city for women.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has responded to reports that a 26-year-old woman in India said she was sexually assaulted by her Uber driver on Friday night.
In an Uber blog post, Kalanick said:
What happened over the weekend in New Delhi is horrific. Our entire team’s hearts go out to the victim of this despicable crime. We will do everything, I repeat, everything to help bring this perpetrator to justice and to support the victim and her family in her recovery.
We will work with the government to establish clear background checks currently absent in their commercial transportation licensing programs. We will also partner closely with the groups who are leading the way on women’s safety here in New Delhi and around the country and invest in technology advances to help make New Delhi a safer city for women.
The woman says her driver sexually assaulted and beat her before warning her not to contact authorities. Uber gave police information about his license, address, and vehicle and details about the woman's trip.
The 32-year-old driver, Shiv Kumar Yadav, was arrested Sunday morning at home, 100 miles from Delhi. He is scheduled to appear in court Monday, AFP reports.
Yadav was previously arrested for sexual assault and was acquitted, but he was still allowed to drive for Uber.
The Transport Department "has banned all activities relating to providing any transport service by the www.Uber.com with immediate effect," the government said in a statement.
The past few months have been a PR nightmare for Uber.
In November at a dinner for "influencers," an Uber executive named Emil Michael suggested the company could theoretically dig up personal information on reporters who are critical of the company. BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith reported on those comments.
BuzzFeed also reported that a New York City Uber executive had tracked one of BuzzFeed's tech reporters without her permission, a breach of Uber's privacy policy (the policy was later posted to Uber's website in light of these incidents). The executive in question, Josh Mohrer, was investigated for spying on the BuzzFeed reporter, and according to Uber has since been disciplined for his actions, but he has kept his job.
And then there was more troubling privacy news: An Uber interview candidate in Washington, D.C. was reportedly given access to Uber's rider database, which is full of sensitive information, for hours after his interview was over, The Washington Post reported. While researching a story about the company, San Francisco magazine editor Ellen Cushing was allegedly warned by Uber employees that Uber might look at her rider logs, too.
But Uber hasn't just upset press and people concerned about user privacy — drivers across the country have also protested the company since September.
They're upset with Uber's competitive pricing, which affects drivers' incomes. Some say they're barely making minimum wage. They don't understand why Uber hasn't integrated a feature to let them accept tips from customers. They're terrified of Uber's five-star rating system, and say that even one bad rating could be enough to knock them out of Uber's driving system and prevent them from driving for the service in the future.
Uber's having a different set of challenges in other countries, especially Germany: Uber's services aren't taking off there in part because the country's taxis are Mercedes, and thus much nicer than a typical American taxi. Germans don't seem enticed by a service like Uber even if it's much cheaper. In addition, courts in Hamburg and Berlin upheld a ban on the service in September, saying that Uber doesn't comply with German laws.
Uber was also banned in Delhi this week after an Indian driver allegedly raped and beat a female customer. The driver had been arrested three years ago for another sexual assault and was later acquitted, but he was still allowed to drive for Uber. In light of the allegations in India, Thailand decided to ban Uber's operations too.
Despite all this, Uber is not down and out. In fact, Uber is doing extraordinarily well right now.
Uber is aiming for world dominance while its rivals struggle to roll out in US markets.
The company hired David Plouffe, who headed up Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, to oversee its city-by-city regulatory battles. Uber is now available in over 250 cities worldwide.
With its latest round of funding, Uber has two main goals: to create a million new jobs next year, and to set its sights set on Asia, where competitors like the SoftBank-backed GrabTaxi and Singapore's Temasek Holding-funded Didi Dache are also trying to take advantage of a relatively untapped market.
Uber has made some smart hires besides Plouffe. Brad Moore, who brought Apple Maps to the iPhone and the Apple Watch, was hired in November and serves as the engineering manager for the "Mobile Core Experience," according to his LinkedIn page. Uber also hired former Lyft COO Travis VanderZanden in October to help oversee Uber's international growth. Lyft's former vice president of operations, Steve Schnell, also defected to Uber.
This kind of growth has also come with significant growing pains. The events of the recent weeks have shown us that we also need to invest in internal growth and change. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them are the first steps. We are collaborating across the company and seeking counsel from those who have gone through similar challenges to allow us to refine and change where needed.
Investors are going crazy for Uber. Some of Uber's earliest markets are basically minting money, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually. In November, Business Insider obtained an internal Uber presentation that was created in early 2014. Most of the data is just from December 2013, but even so, the data within the document gives every indication that Uber is far from being done growing.
In its biggest markets — Washington, D.C., New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles — Uber logged more than 100,000 trips per week as of last December. Here's Business Insider's Alyson Shontell:
In December 2013, Uber generated about $11.7 million in Washington, D.C. (a ~$141 million annual run rate). It generated $26 million in New York City, or an annual run rate of $312 million. In Chicago, Uber generated $12.7 million for a run rate of $152.4 million. In San Francisco, Uber generated $17.7 million, a run rate of $212.4 million. Los Angeles generated somewhere between the revenue of New York and San Francisco.
These run rates would generate about $1 billion a year, and that doesn't even take into account Uber's growth in 2014. Year over year from New Year's Eve 2012 to New Year's Eve 2013, Uber's growth rate was a whopping 369%.
Sources close to the company have said Uber's gross revenue is expected to hit about $10 billion by 2015. Since Uber keeps 20% of gross revenue, the company would be keeping about $2 billion in net revenue.
Business Insider's Henry Blodget adds that Uber's revenue growth rate was 300% this year, and next year it's expected to be another 300%. Blodget also says investors expect the company to have an initial public offering in the next few years, at a valuation of $50 billion to $100 billion. For comparison's sake, Facebook achieved Uber's $41 billion valuation in its seventh year— two years before Facebook went public in 2012.
The reason this is happening is Uber provides something of value: It gets you anywhere you need to go at a reasonable price. It sounds like a simple concept, but Uber was the first to perfect this process. You just tap a couple of buttons on your phone and you can see your car and driver on a map, heading your way. The driver won’t pick up anyone else, so you don’t need to fight people off the street to get a ride. And unlike cabs, Uber drivers must be on their best behavior, since negative reviews can affect their ability to drive for Uber in the future. Moreover, your credit-card information is always saved in the app, so you don’t need to fumble for your wallet at the end of the ride. It’s not perfect, but it’s exceedingly better than taking a random yellow cab off the street.
Outside the transportation market, Uber has a huge opportunity to break into other on-demand services. For instance, Uber launched UberFRESH, a meal-delivery service, in Santa Monica in August. This summer, Uber announced it would be testing out an on-demand delivery service for convenience-store goods called "Corner Store" in Washington, D.C. Uber also launched "Uber Rush" in New York City this year. It's a courier service not unlike Postmates, relying on on-foot and bike messengers to get packages from point A to point B.
Uber has had its share of negative press recently. But if the company can overcome regulatory hurdles, privacy concerns, its often-problematic company culture, and lawsuits — and it certainly can — Uber is poised to become one of the most successful tech startups of all time.
Bill Gurley, an early investor in Uber and a general partner at VC firm Benchmark Capital, says Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick is most similar to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
"If I looked along a vector, he's most like Bezos. And I would say that the business is most like Amazon. It's not a Facebook. It's an operational intensive business," he told Bloomberg's Emily Chang on Wednesday.
Gurley also said the thing Kalanick is best at — and something that makes him like Bezos — is recruiting talent.
"I find him to be most like Jeff. The thing that's least well-understood about Travis is he is an insanely good recruiter. Jeff was always going into Walmart and getting their CIO — just going in and getting the best people he possibly can. And that's what Travis has done."
This year alone, Uber has added some impressive people to its roster. David Plouffe, Obama's 2008 presidential campaign manager, was hired in August to oversee Uber's city-by-city expansion. He serves as senior vice president of policy and strategy.
LONDON (Reuters) - The humble smartphone could throw a spanner in the works of the car sector's post-crisis turnaround, with the big manufacturers facing a long-term threat from apps that make it easier and cheaper to share or hire vehicles than to buy them.
Investor sentiment is on a knife edge.
Car sales are back in recovery mode in most major European markets, yet the fragility of the turnaround could yet be exposed by another economic slowdown while investors have flagged the potential danger posed by web-based services further down the road.
The rise of the likes of car hire app Zipcar and car-pooling rival BlaBlaCar are expected to present new challenges to mass-market carmakers such as Ford, GM, Volvo, Renault and Volkswagen while presenting fresh opportunities for existing rental networks.
Online taxi business Uber is another seeking a slice of the market with its UberPop operation, which links private drivers to passengers, though the U.S. company faces legal challenges in countries including France and Germany.
Cathie Wood, chief executive of ARK Investment Management, is among the growing band of investment professionals expecting a significant behavioral shift among the car-buying public.
"Thanks to web-enabled services like Zipcar, Uber and Lyft, household vehicles are beginning to feel like the stranded assets they are: high in cost but utilized on average only 4 percent of the time in a 24-hour day," she said.
The realization of such by consumers could eventually prove costly for carmakers. Specialist automotive consulting house AlixPartners says that every vehicle in a car-sharing network represents about 32 scrapped decisions to buy.
HEAVY BACKING
ARK Investment Management, meanwhile, says that a rise in car-sharing to 5 percent of all journeys could almost halve U.S. auto sales.
At this early stage, the projections remain a little nebulous and like-for-like comparisons between auto sales and car-share figures are particularly difficult. But it is clear a trend is gathering momentum and there appears to be no shortage of backers keen to tap the austerity zeitgeist.
French billionaire Vincent Bollore unveiled plans to park 3,000 electric cars on London’s streets by 2016 as part of a car-sharing project announced in March. The Bollore group, which also operates car clubs in the French cities of Lyon and Bordeaux, said it would invest 100 million pounds ($157 million) on the UK initiative.
At a global level, the trend has the potential to slow automakers’ annual revenue growth to less than 2.5 percent from 3 percent between 2014 and 2020, according to Yasmina Barin, analyst at Swiss bank and fund management group SYZ.
The initial outlay for a vehicle and running costs that have soared for young drivers because of elevated insurance premiums are another factor in the growth of car-sharing or rental apps.
Uber’s latest funding round valued the company at $40 billion, broadly equivalent to the combined market capitalization of Peugeot, Fiat Chrysler and Volvo.
Gary Paulin, head of brokerage firm Aviate Global, said the trend would also benefit car hire companies such as Avis Budget Group and Hertz but could be more challenging for the traditional carmakers.
"The big listed auto makers will need to adapt," he said.
The market's potential has certainly not been lost on Avis, which runs the Zipcar scheme that says it has more than 870,000 members in various locations around the world and in October launched operations in Madrid.
Hertz, meanwhile, has expanded its 24/7 car rental service to Europe and expects the number of vehicles included in the service to rise to about 500,000 by 2016, from 35,000 today.
ON THE BANDWAGON
Among the manufacturers, some have been quicker to respond than others.
BMW became the latest entrant in London with this month's launch of its DriveNow car-sharing service in partnership with rental firm Sixt. The scheme is already up and running in the United States, Austria and Germany.
Volkswagen's Quicar is present in Hanover, while Daimler's car2go operates in cities including Rome and Berlin, running 12,500 cars for a million customers.
SYZ analyst Barin believes that carmakers could still cope with the car-sharing phenomenon because the smaller cars used in such schemes might have to be replaced quickly and manufacturers could focus on producing such vehicles.
Yet for all their efforts to limit sales erosion, the manufacturers are likely to be left competing in a shrinking overall car market as a new breed of driver emerges.
"I thought about buying a car," 28-year-old London-based PR executive Claire Rumbellow said, "but decided it would be cheaper and more practical to use a car-sharing scheme because I use a car only once a week at most.
CES — the vast consumer electronics show in Las Vegas that's going on this week — can be expensive. It's full of dinner meetings, taxis, and pricey hotels. But billionaire Uber founder Travis Kalanick has a few techniques to do CES on a budget — like staying at a cheap Econo Lodge instead of a casino on The Strip.
CES is notorious for its costly hotel prices — the whole city is sold out, basically — and long, winding taxi lines. In 2008, after six years running content delivery company Red Swoosh, Kalanick wrote how he worked half of his time at the company without a salary so had to find ways to save money.
"Necessity taught me the very fine art of bootstrapping," Kalanick writes. "Blood, Sweat and RAMEN is what I like to call it. I was always thinking about how to make things ultra-cheap, hyper-efficient, while making a good story out of it..."
Kalanick divides his CES cost-cutting hacks into four categories: Taxis; Hotels; Traffic; and Parties. He's got ways to deal with them all but his most surprising call to action is noting that people should stay at the Econo Lodge (a US hotel brand that's even cheaper than Travellodge, for those of you in the UK). Kalanick also says "sneaking into panel sessions" makes the whole affair cheaper.
This is the Econo Lodge Musk mentions:
He says Las Vegas' famous strip — where most people stay when at CES — will cost you $300 a night. It's even more at the high-end hotels. But Econo Lodge rooms, Kalanick explains, are around $40 a night. Kalanick likes the fact the motel is close to the the convention centre and isn't far from fast food joints. He advises stocking accommodation with muffins, juice, beef jerky, and Red Bull, too.
There's also a porn shop across the road...
Unfortunately, the Econo Lodge in Las Vegas is no more. The hotel at 1150 South Las Vegas Blvd. is now "On The Vegas Boulevard Hotel"— but it still gives you an idea of where Kalanick stayed before he was famous.
On Tripadvisor, there's one "excellent" review, but 9 "terrible" ones. It looks quite basic. The customer comments aren't all bad — words like "reasonable" and "value for money" arise — but some of them are brutal. One German guest gets riled at the "outrageous woman at the front desk". One person says it's the "worst hotel I have ever come across", another complains that their room was "full of bed bugs," and a third person warns people to "stay away".
Here's another:
And some people complain about the "environment". Next door does look like it needs some work...
Judging by the state of the hotel he recommends, you might want to find somewhere outside the "sleazy part of town" neighbourhood, as one reviewer remarks.
Correction: In this post Business Insider originally said Elon Musk was the author of the blog. Not so! We corrected the story a few minutes later.
MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The chief executive of controversial online ride-sharing company Uber stuck a newly conciliatory tone on Sunday, promising to create 50,000 new jobs this year across Europe in cities that are willing to reach deals to help his firm operate.
"We want to make 2015 the year where we establish a new partnership with EU cities," Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick told attendees at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany's largest annual gathering of media and tech leaders.
Four-year-old Uber, which helps users summon taxi-like services on their smartphones, has drawn a firestorm of criticism, even as it has continued to expand rapidly into more than 250 cities worldwide.
In Europe, where it offers a range of local transportation options from professional limousine services to informal ride-sharing options, Uber has been hit with court injunctions in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain for violating taxi licensing rules.
Kalanick said Uber had created thousands of full- and part-time driving jobs in cities where it is running. To mayors who reach deals to free up Uber's ride-sharing service to operate, he pledged: "We can promise you 10,000 jobs in four years."
"At the end of 2015, if we can make these partnerships happen, we create 50,000 new EU jobs," he said, referring to the equivalent number of full-time jobs. Uber's mobile phone application connects private drivers to passengers seeking local rides.
Uber, now the world's most highly valued venture-backed start-up, worth upwards of $41 billion (35.5 billion euros), has faced regulatory scrutiny and court injunctions from its earliest days as a San Francisco start-up.
It has also come under fire for its aggressive response to rivals and critics as well as questions over whether the company has enough safeguards in place to ensure the physical safety and privacy of passengers using its services.
A woman who was allegedly raped by an Uber taxi driver in India's capital has hired a prominent lawyer to sue the online-hailing taxi service in U.S. courts. Uber faces mounting complaints about its use of "surge pricing" to attract drivers at peak demand periods. Some critics go further, arguing that Uber's system may drive down the prices drivers can charge for their services in the long-run.
Kalanick has previously been an outspoken opponent of local government regulation. He frequently decries what he says is red-tape and regulation that protects entrenched taxi industry interests and which is designed to block transport alternatives.
Berlin (AFP) - The car-sharing start-up Uber can create as many as 50,000 jobs in Europe this year as part of a "new partnership" with European cities, its chief executive told a conference in Munich.
"If we can make this partnership happen, we create 50,000 new EU jobs for 2015," Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told the DLD conference, which is being held until Tuesday.
Uber could "become huge job generator," he said, without providing any concrete details.
He said the service had already created 7,500 full-time-equivalent jobs in San Francisco, 13,750 in New York, 10,000 in London and 3,750 in Paris.
The fast-growing firm, which helps users summon taxi-like services via their smartphones, has drawn criticism across the world from regulators and established taxi operators.
Set up four years ago, it now operates in 250 cities worldwide.
But critics have accused Uber of flouting competition rules and of not carrying out sufficient safety checks on drivers and their vehicles.
Uber has been hit with court injunctions in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and has faced protests from taxi firms in major cities, including London.
"We want to make 2015 a year where we establish a new partnership with EU cities, where we push for progressive regulation and ensure innovation ..., where we provide massive economic benefits to cities and their economies," Kalanick said.
"How many unemployed people can come on this platform and find a way to make a living, to be part of an economic opportunity," he said.
Started in 2009 in San Francisco, "as a response to events repeatedly highlighting only success," it has since spread to over 11 locations across the globe.
Numerous high-profile speakers have attended over the years including Uber's Travis Kalanick, who divulged the gritty details behind his company Akamai.
Bloomberg's Serena Saitto first reported the fundraising, which Business Insider has confirmed with a Goldman Sachs representative.
Uber is raising an additional $600 million from hedge funds to complete the $1.2 billion financing round from late last year.
This brings Uber's total funding to more than $4 billion since its launch in 2010.
A large chunk of the cash will be used to further Uber's expansion, particularly in Asia. It will also be used to further its UberPool product, which allows city residents to split fares and trips with each other, making rides significantly cheaper.
Uber declined to comment on the fundraising and convertible-debt round.
Uber is building an Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh, Pa., in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University that will research and develop mapping and vehicle safety and autonomy technology, the company announced Monday.
"The center will focus on the development of key long-term technologies that advance Uber’s mission of bringing safe, reliable transportation to everyone, everywhere," the company writes in its blog post.
Uber, which raised more than $4 billion since its 2010 launch, has reportedly already made a "multi-hundred-thousand dollar investment in third-party engineering workstations," according to TechCrunch.
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is getting incredibly rich — at least on paper. 
As you can see, the agreement differs only by one category. While Uber requests access to Wi-Fi, Lyft requires access to SMS. The other seven permissions categories are the same.
LONDON (Reuters) - The humble smartphone could throw a spanner in the works of the car sector's post-crisis turnaround, with the big manufacturers facing a long-term threat from apps that make it easier and cheaper to share or hire vehicles than to buy them.
Judging by the state of the hotel he recommends, you might want to find somewhere outside the "sleazy part of town" neighbourhood, 
MUNICH/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The chief executive of controversial online ride-sharing company Uber stuck a newly conciliatory tone on Sunday, promising to create 50,000 new jobs this year across Europe in cities that are willing to reach deals to help his firm operate.
