“LET’S Uber.”
Few companies offer something so popular that their name becomes a verb. But that is one of the many achievements of Uber, a company founded in 2009 which is now the world’s most valuable startup, worth around $70 billion.
Its app can summon a car in moments in more than 425 cities around the world, to the fury of taxi drivers everywhere.
But Uber’s ambitions, and the expectations underpinning its valuation, extend much further: using self-driving vehicles, it wants to make ride-hailing so cheap and convenient that people forgo car ownership altogether.
Not satisfied with shaking up the $100-billion-a-year taxi business, it has its eye on the far bigger market for personal transport, worth as much as $10 trillion a year globally.
Uber is not alone in this ambition. Companies big and small have recognized the transformative potential of electric, self-driving cars, summoned on demand. Technology firms including Apple, Google and Tesla are investing heavily in autonomous vehicles; from Ford to Volvo, incumbent carmakers are racing to catch up. An epic struggle looms. It will transform daily life as profoundly as cars did in the 20th century: reinventing transport and reshaping cities, while also dramatically reducing road deaths and pollution.
In the short term Uber is in pole position to lead the revolution because of its dominance of chauffeured ride-hailing, a part of the transport market that will see some of the fastest growth. Today ride-hailing accounts for less than 4% of all kilometres driven globally, but that will rise to more than 25% by 2030, according to Morgan Stanley, a bank.
The ability to summon a car using a smartphone does not just make it easy for individuals to book a cheaper taxi. Ride-sharing services like UberPool, which put travellers heading in the same direction into one vehicle, blur the boundaries between private and public transport. Helsinki and other cities have been experimenting with on-demand bus services and apps that enable customers to plan and book journeys combining trains and buses with walking and private ride-sharing services.
Get it right, and public-transport networks will be extended to cover the “last mile” that takes people right to their doorsteps. This will extend the market for ride-hailing well beyond the wealthy urbanites who are its main users today.
Read more of the original article at The Economist.
