Driving

Uber in London: The Streisand Effect keeps on giving

ianwaring Android, Apple, Cars, Driving, Future Trends, Google, Internet, Marketing, Mobiles, Politicians, Software Leave a comment

Uber Logo

With the same overall theme as yesterday, if you’re looking at your future, step one is to look at what your customers would value, then to work back to the service components to deliver it.

I’ve followed Uber since I first discovered them in San Francisco, and it looks a simple model – to the user. You want to go from where you are to another local destination. You typically see where the closest driver is to you on your smartphone. You ask your handset for a price to go to a specific destination. It tells you. If you accept, the car is ordered and comes to pick you up. When you get dropped off, your credit card is charged, and both you and the taxi driver get the opportunity to rate each other. Job done.

Behind that facade is a model of supply and demand. Taxi drivers that can clock on and off at will. At times of high demand and dwindling available ride capacity, prices are ramped up (to “surge” pricing) to encourage more drivers onto the road. Drivers and customers with voluminous bad ratings removed. Drivers paid well enough to make more money than those in most taxi firms ($80-90,000/year in New York), or the freedom to work part time – even down to a level where your reward is to pay for your car for a few hours per week of work, and have free use of it at other times.

The service is simple and compelling enough that i’d have thought tax firms would have cottoned onto how the service works, and to replicate it before Uber ever appeared on these shores. But, with a wasted five years, they’ve appeared – and Taxi drivers all over Europe decided to run the most effective advertising campaign for an upstart competitor in their history. A one-day 850% subscriber growth; that really takes some doing, even if you were on the same side.

I’m just surprised that whoever called the go-slows all over Europe didn’t take the time out to study what we in the tech industry know as “The Streisand Effect” – Wikipedia reference here. BBC Radio 2 even ran a segment on Uber at lunchtime today, followed by every TV News Bulletin i’ve heard since. I downloaded the app as a result of hearing it on that lunchtime slot, as I guess many others did too (albeit no coverage in my area 50 miles West of London – yet). Given the five years of missed prep time, I think they’ve now lost – or find themselves in fast follower mode to incorporate similar technology into their service before they have a mass exodus to Uber (of customers, then drivers).

London Cabbies do know all the practical use of rat runs that SatNav systems are still learning, but even that is a matter of time now. I suspect appealing for regulation will, at best, only delay the inevitable.

The safest option – given users love the simplicity and lack of surprises in the service – is to get busy quickly. Plenty of mobile phone app prototyping help available on the very patch that London Black Cab drivers serve.

More evidence of the Relentless Migration from CapEx to OpEx

ianwaring Cars, Driving, Future Trends, Google, Mobiles Leave a comment

Google Self Driving Car

There’s been quite a lot of commentary in the last week following Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s presentation at the Re/code Conference; he got to show this video of the next iteration of their self driving cars. For a bit of history leading up to that announcement, i’d recommend watching two videos on the progress of this project to date, and then the video Sergey showed last week:

  1. Sebastian Thrun – the project lead – giving a presentation about self driving cars in 2011 and showing a few of them in action here (it lasts 4 mins, 14 seconds).
  2. A video that Google produced with a twist near the end here (3 mins 1 second long).
  3. And the video of the new exploratory design announced this week here (2 mins 53 seconds).

My brain diverted another way to most. Have you ever seen and experienced Uber? You open an app on your Smartphone, which identifies where you are located. You tell it where you’d like to travel to, and it will tell you (a) how long a wait until a taxi will arrive to collect you and (b) the fixed cost of the journey. If you accept both, your taxi is scheduled, collects you, drops you off and the charge made to your credit card. Done! The system is set so that both driver and passenger rate their experience, so that good service from both ends of the transaction is maintained.

It’s probably well known that most cars purchased are tremendously under utilised and taking up valuable parking space in Cities all over the world. There are separate innovations where drivers can clock on and off at any time they wish, and obviously less resources available results in the pricing rising – to encourage more Uber drivers back online to service the demand. There are also periods of exceptional demand where Uber will jack the prices right up – transparently to all – to ensure there are the right number of drivers available to service the very busy customer demand periods (like rush hours).

Uber have stirred controversy in the Taxi industry because anyone (with lack of bad references) can be a Uber driver, and part time working is a personal choice. Those who work full time, as self employed drivers, often get much higher pay than most routine licensed Taxi drivers; in New York, reckoned to be north of $90,000/year gross and (after car finance and depreciation costs) around $60,000/year. Drivers who operate part time can use the income to offset the cost of their cars, partly or completely, if that is their choice.

The bit that caught my imagination was what would happen if a City (or a private company) bought a fleet of these Google cars and hooked them into Uber. After use, they go to their next collection point or back to a well researched cache – ready for the best possible service to the next likely passenger. Or to the Petrol Station to be refueled (and I hope a manufacturer recall doesn’t end up with fleets of them working back to their factory, all at once!).

I guess in the early days, there will be idiots on the road who’ll try to psych them out, but once an integral piece of local life, I think a Google/Uber combination would be tremendous. Not least, as yet another glowing example that paying for a shared resource is much cheaper than the inefficiencies inherent in expensive, rarely used Capital assets.

CapEx is the past, OpEx is the future.

Gute Fahrt – 3 simple tips to make your drivers safer

ianwaring Cars, Courses, Driving, Training Leave a comment

Gute Fahrt - Safe Journey

That’s German for “Safe Journey”. Not directly related to computers or the IT industry, but a symptom of the sort of characters it attracts to the Sales ranks. A population of relatively young drivers of fairly expensive and quite powerful cars. In our case, one female manager in Welwyn who took it as a personal affront to be overtaken in her BMW. Another Salesman in Bristol, driving his boss to a meeting in Devon in his new Ford Capri 2.8 Injection; the mistake was to leave very late and to be told by his Manager to “step on it”. I think he’s still trying to remove the stain from the passenger seat.

With that, the rather inevitable bad accident statistics, not least as statistics suggest that 90% of drivers think they are better than average. As a result, every driver in the company got put on a mandatory one day course, an attempt to stem that tide. The first thing that surprised me that the whole one day course was spent in a classroom, and not a single minute driving a car. But the end result of attending that one class was very compelling.

As was the business change example given previously (in http://www.ianwaring.com/2014/03/24/jean-louis-gassee-priorities-targets-and-aims/), there were only three priorities that everyone followed to enact major changes – and to lower the accident rate considerably. In doing so, even my wife noticed subtle changes the very next time she rode in our car with me (a four hour family trip to Cornwall).

The three fundamentals were:

  1. Stay at least 2 seconds behind the car in front, independent of your speed. Just pick any fixed roadside object that the car in front goes past, and recite “only a fool breaks the two second rule”. As long as you haven’t passed the same object by the time you’ve finished reciting that in your mind, you’re in good shape. In rain, make that 4 seconds.
  2. If you’re stationary and waiting to turn right in the UK (or turning left in countries that drive on the right hand side of the road), keep the front wheels of your car facing directly forward. Resist all urges to point the wheels toward the road you’re turning into. A big cause of accidents is being rear-ended by a car behind you. If your front wheels are straight, you will just roll straight down the road; if turned, you’ll most likely to fund yourself colliding head on with fast oncoming traffic.
  3. Chill. Totally. Keep well away from other drivers who are behaving aggressively or taking unnecessary risks. Let them pass, keep out of the way and let them have their own accidents without your involvement. If you feel aggrieved, do not give chase; it’s an unnecessary risk to you, and if you catch them, you’ll only likely embarrass yourself and others. And never, ever seek solace in being able to prove blame; if you get to the stage when you’re trying to argue who’s fault it is, you’ve lost already. Avoid having the accident in the first place.

There were supplementary videos to prove the points, including the customary “spot the lorry drivers cab after the one at the back ran into another in front”. But the points themselves were easy to remember. After the initial running of the course in the branch office with the worst accident statistics, they found:

  • The accident rate effectively went to zero in the first three months since that course was run
  • The number of “unattended” accidents – such as those alleged in car parks when the driver was not present – also dropped like a stone. Someone telling porkie pies before!
  • As a result, overall costs reduced at the same time as staff could spend more face time with customers

That got replicated right across the company. If in doubt, try it. I bet everyone else who rides with you will notice – and feel more relaxed and comfortable by you doing so.