They make people believe it makes sense, it’s a SHARING thing! 
I’e used uber a few times in the last week, it’s still cheaper than taxis
Not when I took it for longer distances . Also their quoted fares seem wildly inaccurate.
Dont get the love for Uber , do get get the annoyance for taxis in Taiwan though.
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My number one pet peeve of Uber is their duplicitous, aggressive PR team. Anytime a local government or organization tries in anyway to make Uber fairly follow the laws of the land, they always come out with the same old nonsensical spiel “… Is anti innovation, stuck in the past, pandering to unions, pandering to taxi lobby’s blah blah blah”
Ubers goal is to get rid of employees altogether.
Or contractors as I guess they call them.
Well as you know my school of thought is as close to minimal state and anarchism without actually crossing the line into anarchy
I think the government should butt out of regulating everything unless something is demonstratively harmful to others … I support a complete deregulation of the taxi industry and have no issue if local citizens want to set up their own taxi services, as long as they meet minimum safety standards and pay corporate tax. It would have the added benefit of forcing leech companies like uber to leave.
Won’t ever happen but just some rambling thoughts 
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There is an article on this somewhere. That Ubers only hope is self driving cars, but this will be fruitless. It’s just the spiel they are selling to investors.
1)We are years away from self driving cars bring used commercially. Uber have accrued billions of debt and there is no reason to believe they will survive that long.
2)Ubers model is based on that they don’t own any vehicles. They put all the financial risk on the driver’s and claim that they are just a tech company, a middleman connecting drivers with riders.
A self driving car model would be a 360 turnaround. They would have to purchase millions of vehicles. They would also become liable for all insurance claims. Uber wouldn’t have any advantage in a self driving car market.
The company is a pyramid scheme and it’s run by the very worst people on the planet. Travis Kalanick is a nastier, greedier version of Gordon Gecko. We should be very vigilant on companies like Uber and empower governments to control them very closely
Better drivers. - Anyone is a better driver than most of the guys!
No stop, go, stop, go, stop, go 5 times even just between 2 stoplights. -traffic?
No stinky taxi. -Always smelled nice and was clean so far
No trying to run down pedestrians in crosswalk. -Just TW thing
No window so full of electronics and buddha statues that driver can’t see. -Only ever see TV in back of seat, but no Buddha’s
No yelling and making hand signals at other car or bus drivers. -All the ones i’ve taken are silent
No burping, coughing up lunch, making lip smacking picking teeth sounds. -Nothing like this either
No quizzing partner about the foreigner in the car. -Or this
No wooden beads on the seats. -Had this a couple times
No watching soap opera on TV while flying down the road. -Only ever see GPS
No 30 year old Taiwanese opera music. -Aha yea, but who cares
No Hakka lessons. -Never had Maori’ in the car doing a war dance…
What’s wrong with wooden bead cushions?
I’m not a Uber user (and rarely a taxi user), and I’m not very familiar with the company.
That said, I’m not sure about that (again, based on the info you included). Why can’t Uber keep their model and depend on private owners of driverless cars? Obviously there would be a mix of driver and driverless for some time, but we can see a day where driverless cars are the norm. When that time comes Uber would still have its sub-contractor model, private citizens would be free to purchase/insure multiple driverless cars and make them available to Uber, and both sides win. (except taxis, of course)
If the meta is to do away with the ‘burden’ of humans in the taxi industry by subverting the taxi industry - a flanking maneuver where bothersome human drivers are eventually left out - then Uber’s model would still accomplish that, no?
But how would that work? You are waiting for not only the commercial adoption of Self Driving Vehicles (10-15 years away). Uber are buuuuurrrrrning through cash and will never last that long. And their plan is a future where millions of people purchase self-driving vehicles and are ready to sublet to Uber? Pretty unrealistic plan to build your companies future on
If you follow Uber carefully, they have invested in Self driving vehicles and have teased with the idea of owning the cars. This is just to excite investors.
Check out this article (last part of brilliant series) https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/12/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-eleven-annual-uber-losses-now-approaching-5-billion.html
The whole series is organized better here https://medium.com/@michaelhaupt/this-is-such-an-important-read-its-worth-providing-the-link-1bbe9304a3a8
This report implies Uber is not good.
“Uber Technologies Inc and Lyft Inc drivers in the US make a median profit of US$3.37 per hour before taxes, according to a report.”
“The report — which factored in insurance, maintenance, repairs, fuel and other costs — found that 30 percent of drivers are losing money on the job and that 74 percent earn less than the minimum wage in their states.
The findings have raised fresh concerns about labor standards in the booming sharing economy, as companies such as Uber and Lyft continue to face scrutiny over their treatment of drivers, who are classified as independent contractors and have few rights or protections.”
“This business model is not currently sustainable,” said Stephen Zoepf, executive director of Stanford University’s Center for Automotive Research and coauthor of the paper. “The companies are losing money. The businesses are being subsidized by [venture capital] money and the drivers are essentially subsidizing it by working for very low wages.”
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It’s a tough decision, the more competition the better for consumers yes. But I have spoken to many local Taxi driver’s and their gripe with Uber is that Taxi drivers have to take a test and pay for the whole process to be legit. And Union fees as well.
Uber drivers do not need any of that to operate. I also heard they do not pay taxes? Not sure if thats true. What do you guys think?
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i’m all for it, i don’t have much love for the way the taxi drivers drive.
what kind of a test do the taxi drivers have to take? complete a level of GTA?
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haha a level of GTA, good one!
Uber is great for me because of 2 things: 1) clean and 2) pay via app.
I think many of the taxi companies have apps, but I don’t find them friendly especially if you can’t read Chinese. My boss’s driver use to be an Uber driver and he said he stopped doing it full time because it was too risky.
More to the point, is there any legitimate basis for stopping Uber? I would say not.
Private cars spend 98% of their time sitting on the road doing nothing. It a horrific waste of capital, not to mention a waste of public real estate. Anything that mobilizes that capital is a good thing, especially if it gives people an incentive not to buy a vehicle of their own.
OTOH taxis will always have a place, especially if the taxi drivers can up their game. If they can genuinely offer a higher level of service, consistently, then people will still want to use them; Uber by definition is a bit hit-and-miss. Uber is not a kind of taxi service, even if it superficially looks like one.
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I’ve read though that their strategy is to get such a stranglehold on the market that the existing taxi firms are forced out of the business. So it’s more competition in the short term but then in the long term less (or no) competition, presumably at that point they hike their prices up and put the squeeze on their drivers earnings.
If the local taxis could make some improvements to pinch some of Ubers better aspects it would be ideal. I like the app and I like that you can leave reviews of the drivers, some (ok most) of Taipei’s taxi drivers drive like maniacs. And half of them don’t know where anything is.
The openness of the Uber app is the way forward.l along with online receipts and payments and reviews.
I don’t think it needs to be uber that does it , choice is always good. Uber is not your best friend.
I’d gladly pay more to ride in taxis if they: Drove more safely, didn’t smell, cleaned their cars, offered an easy cashless app with prescribed routes and open driver ratings. As it stands they really struggle with these things compared to Uber, and yeah Uber is actually quite a bit cheaper for me.
The fact that the taxi drivers are complaining about all the stuff Uber doesn’t do (which is of seemingly little benefit to me as a consumer) makes me avoid them even more. If they instead started figuring out how to “up their game” as the OP states above, I might be more sympathetic.
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I agree.
Part of the problem is the government insistence on drawing a distinction between private and public-service vehicles. This is stupid. The only thing that changes when driving strangers around is personal risk (customers, drivers, or other road users). That could be easily resolved by offering PSV operators something in exchange for their fees and registration, instead of just seeing it as another form of tax. For example, people who (voluntarily) register and pay PSV fees might be given access to a government-sponsored app and/or radio network; they might be provided with in-vehicle security cameras linked to police stations (for both passenger and driver safety); they might get preferential insurance rates if they take advanced driver courses; and so on.
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