BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Uber [UBER.UL] said on Friday it would open up its trove of travel data in Paris to the public to help city officials and urban planners better understand transportation needs, as the company seeks to woo national authorities.
FILE PHOTO: The Uber logo is seen on mobile telephone in London, Britain, September 25, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
The U.S. ride-hailing app collects huge amounts of data from the billions of trips taken by customers which it uses to improve its services and has recently started to make it available for a number of cities including Washington D.C., Sydney and Boston.
“We get asked all the time ‘Is there any way you can share more data? We’d love to see where people are traveling in our city’,” Adam Gromis, who is responsible for environmental sustainability at Uber, told Reuters.
The service, called Uber Movement, shows how long it takes to make a journey between two points in a city at different times of the day.
Uber is making the data available via a free website which can be accessed by anyone with an Uber account, but it is aimed particularly at city planners. (movement.uber.com)
To respect users’ privacy, Uber Movement uses only aggregated anonymised data.
Uber, which launched in Paris in 2011, has had a rocky relationship with regulators across Europe who have accused it of flouting their traditional licensing rules.
Protests by taxi drivers against the smartphone app turned violent in 2015 when Paris cabbies overturned cars and burned tyres.
Uber has suffered a tumultuous few months that led to former CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick being forced out after a series of boardroom controversies and regulatory battles in a number of U.S. states and around the world.
Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has struck a less confrontational approach than his predecessor – particularly in London where Uber is challenging a decision by the transport regulator to strip it of its operating license in the city.
“As a technology company we can play a role in helping cities make data-driven decisions for the benefit of the environment and its citizens,” Alexandre Droulers, Uber’s general manager for new mobility in western Europe, said.
Transport planning usually relies on expensive household travel surveys which are conducted on average every 10 years in the Paris region, making Uber’s data a lot more up to date.
Reporting by Julia Fioretti; Editing by Adrian Croft
More than a century after the dawn of the automobile age, cars are a young person’s game again. Sure, the grey-haired bigwigs have started to catch on to the big trends—electricity, automation, connectedness—but if this week’s news is any indication, it’s the youth leading the charge. From the 22-year-old laser genius to the self-driving pioneer who fell from grace to the college kids rethinking America’s favorite ride, the kids have had a wild seven days. Let’s get you caught up.
Headlines
Stories you might have missed from WIRED this week
If you’ve followed the world of self-driving cars in the past decade chances are you’ve heard of Anthony Levandowski. He’s had a wild ride in recent years, building a self-driving motorcycle, helping launch Google’s autonomy project, and now, getting caught in the center of a barnstormer of a lawsuit between Google and Uber. With that trial just a few weeks away Mark Harris at WIRED’s sister publication Backchannel wrote a captivating profile of Levandowski—including his foundation of a religious organization dedicated to artificially intelligent robots.
Looking for a life that hasn’t been derailed by a vicious lawsuit and the specter of criminal charges? I spent some time with Austin Russell, the 22-year-old founder and CEO of Luminar. After dropping out of Stanford at 17, Russell spent five years rebuilding the lidar laser sensors widely considered critical for fully driverless, and just sold a bunch of the things to Toyota.
Ford is worried about the vitality of its sacred cash cow, the F-150, Jack reports. To stay relevant, it has turned to a crew of students to rethink its next generation of pickups for an age of autonomy and electricity. The design competition will run until December, and we’ll have more to report when we see what the kids think of the future.
Meanwhile, Ford’s established (i.e., professional) designers are learning new tricks, Eric Adams tells us. The automaker has started using Microsoft Hololens augmented reality goggles to make car creation faster, easier, and way cooler.
Across the pond, London is fighting back against the youthful revolutionaries, refusing to extend Uber’s license to operate on its streets. A legal battle looms, but whatever the outcome, Aarian says, London makes clear that old fogeys can erect their own barricades.
Old-timer Aston Martin has had a good couple of years, pumping out fresh offerings like the DB11 and Vanquish Volante S. This week, it introduced a different kind of vehicle. A submarine. It’s called Project Neptune, and it will be a certainly swanky, limited production submersible that definitely won’t be used by fleeing rich people when the FBI swarms their yachts.
Required Reading
News from elsewhere on the internet
More than two years after showing off the world’s first self-driving semi, Daimler has announced plans to test platooning tech on US roads, Reuters reports. Instead of one truck driving itself, platooning involves a fleet of vehicles driving very closely together with the help of automatic and connected controls, to cut wind resistance and save on fuel. Down the road, you could even leave just the one human in the lead vehicle, to add salary savings to the pile.
If the autonomous vehicle industry is a party, Lyft is that dude who somehow gets along with everybody. Uber’s arch-rival has already set up partnerships with General Motors, Waymo, Land Rover, and startups Nutonomy and Drive.ai. Now, per The New York Times, Ford is among the folks working to deploy robocars via Lyft’s ridehailing network.
A minor mystery in the auto world is why Toyota, after making the world’s first popular hybrid (the Prius), didn’t capitalize on its technological lead to surge into fully electric cars. Another riddle: Why Mazda is still tinkering with things like archaic, famously dirty rotary engine, and insists it can wring diesel-like power from gasoline engines. Whatever the answers, the Japanese automakers have now joined forces to catch up with the electric current. The Verge reports Toyota and Mazda, along with supplier Denso, have formed a new venture called EV Common Architecture Spirit Co Ltd., to develop battery-powered rides.
Wanna know the real reason automakers are ramping up their electric efforts? It’s because regulators around the world—prodded by revelations of Volkswagen’s dirty diesels and the Paris climate accord—are making plans to ban sales of gasoline- and diesel-powered cars. China, the world’s largest market, is leading that charge. This week, it ratcheted up its demands that automakers selling vehicles in the country produce electrics. “China has triggered the worldwide electric car festival,” one analyst told The Wall Street Journal.
In the Rearview
Essential stories from WIRED’s canon.
Interested in Anthony Levandowski’s glory days? Douglas McCray’s 2004 reporting from the first Darpa Grand Challenge introduces the engineer when he was just a Berkeley grad student with the wild idea of building a motorcycle that could drive itself across the desert.
SAN FRANCISCO/LONDON (Reuters) – Half a million people have signed an online petition in under 24 hours backing Uber’s bid to stay on the roads of London, showing the company is turning to its tried-and-tested tactic of asking customers for help when it locks horns with regulators.
London’s transport authorities stunned the powerful U.S. start-up on Friday when they deemed Uber unfit to run a taxi service for safety reasons and stripped it of its license from Sept. 30, although it can operate while it appeals.
The regulator cited failures to report serious criminal offences, conduct sufficient background checks on drivers and other safety issues, threatening the U.S. firm’s presence in one of the world’s wealthiest cities.
Uber immediately urged users in London to sign a petition that said the city authorities had “caved in to a small number of people who want to restrict consumer choice”.
By 1400 GMT on Saturday, nearly 540,000 people had signed although it was not clear how many of them were in London.
Uber counted 3.5 million active users in London in the past three months. Even if many tourists are probably included in the total, the figure represents a potential political force of commuters who face long journeys between their home and offices and who use Uber as a cheaper alternative to other taxi firms.
Turning to users for help is one of the first steps in Uber’s playbook. In Jakarta, Budapest, Toronto and Portland it asked riders to sign petitions and built online tools to contact lawmakers to show their support.
Regulators have at least partly relented in Portland, Toronto and Jakarta, but Budapest remains a work in progress.
Uber now faces a showdown with London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, who this month said he wouldn’t let his teenage daughters use cabs like Uber on their own over fears for their safety.
Khan, a leading figure in Britain’s opposition Labour Party, said on Saturday he had sympathy with Uber drivers and customers.
“But their anger really should be directed at Uber,” Khan said in a statement. “They have let down their drivers and customers by failing, in the view of TfL, to act as a fit and proper operator.”
But he also suggested that Uber might eventually be allowed to continue operating in London.
“I want to be absolutely clear that there is a place in London for all private hire companies that play by the rules,” Khan said. “I suspect it will take some time before this situation with Uber fully plays out.”
As mayor, Khan is chairman of Transport for London, the regulator which stripped Uber of its license.
London’s decision is the first major challenge for new Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi, who took over from co-founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick. He was forced out after internal and external investigations into sexual harassment complaints, the thwarting of government inquiries and potential bribery.
NEW REGIME?
So far, Khosrowshahi has adopted a softer tone to the crisis in London than his predecessor did in similar situations.
“Dear London: we (are) far from perfect” Khosrowshahi tweeted on Friday. But he noted that 40,000 drivers and millions of riders were dependent on the service. “Please work with us to make things right.”
A taxi drives past the London Eye in central London, Britain September 22, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Khosrowshahi appeared to be following earlier game plans, said Bradley Tusk, an Uber investor who advised on policy in New York City for the company.
“A lot of people rely on it, so there’s going to be a lot of fertile ground to mobilise,” Tusk said. “If real people are angry, it’s a lot harder for regulators.”
But while Uber has been ready to make campaigns personal in the past, Khosrowshahi may take a more moderate tone.
In New York City, Austin, Texas and Washington, D.C., Uber hired political ad agencies and consultants and blasted political leaders for supporting measures that could eliminate jobs and worsen traffic.
During a stand-off in New York City in 2015, Uber named a mock feature on its app after the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, and used it to warn that a regulatory proposal he backed could increase waits for rides.
Kalanick issued tweets criticizing opponents, including an all-capitalized message saying “WATCH THIS!” which linked to a video that suggested the mayor was obstructing social progress.
Slideshow (2 Images)
“They have a lot more scrutiny on them now,” said Reed Galen, a political consultant who worked with Uber on a campaign in Austin. “Going with the old idea of punching the local leader in the nose, that strategy doesn’t work when you’ve had the issues Uber has had.”
Khosrowshahi’s statements on Friday were an “absolutely different take”, Galen said.
In an internal email seen by Reuters, Khosrowshahi said there was a “high cost” to having a bad reputation. He described it as “critical” that employees “act with integrity in everything we do, and learn how to be a better partner to every city we operate in”.
WAITING GAME
For a company known for the speed of its growth, Uber has shown patience when needed. It has long treated tussles with government as inevitable challenges, but ones it sees as temporary setbacks.
Uber has suspended its services for months in some markets, including Alaska and Texas. But it’s been able to return within a year or two in most cases by working out new rules or turning to higher authorities such as courts and state governments.
The efforts have a cost. Uber and rival Lyft Inc together spent more than $ 10 million on a failed ballot-box campaign in Austin and millions more on lobbying elsewhere in Texas.
Uber continues to engage in a cat-and-mouse game with city officials in many of the 600 plus cities in which it operates.
It suspended services in July in Finland but plans to re-enter Helsinki next year after a law was passed de-regulating taxi services.
Whether Uber continues such tactics is unclear. But Tusk said Uber was probably already in touch with members of Britain’s parliament.
In a sign of early political opposition to London’s move, Greg Hands, the minister for London in the Conservative government, hit out at what he called a “blanket ban” on Uber.
“At the flick of a pen Sadiq Khan is threatening to put 40,000 people out of work and leave 3.5 million users of Uber stranded,” Hands tweeted late on Friday.
“Once again the actions of Labour leave ordinary working people (to) pay the price for it.”
Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Peter Henderson and Andrew Bolton
A petition on Change.org says that the decision by Transport for London, the city’s transportation authority, satisfied a small number of people” while putting “more than 40,000 licensed drivers out of work” and depriving a “convenient and affordable form of transport” to millions of Londoners.
Tom Elvidge, general manager of Uber in London, initially appeared as the petition’s creator, but a change Friday afternoon switched the author to “Uber London.” Uber did not immediately return Fortune’s request for comment on the authenticity and origin of the petition, but its language mirrors a statement Elvidge issued after the TfL decision.
By 3 p.m. BST on Friday the petition had received nearly 70,000 signatures, at one point gaining more than 25,000 in a 20-minute span.
The TfL announced earlier in the day that it had decided to effectively ban Uber in London after determining that the company “is not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator license.” The company’s current license expires at the end of September.
In making its decision, the authority that regulates London’s taxis cited Uber’s inadequate screening and background checks of drivers, its “approach to how medical certificates are obtained,” and the use of its controversial “Greyball” software that blocks regulators from gaining full access to the app. The TfL also—rather damningly—questioned Uber’s “approach to reporting serious criminal offenses” by its drivers—an issue raised in an extensive submission by the Metropolitan Police.
Uber says it plans to appeal the decision, and it will be able to operate in London during that lengthy process.
The charge.org petition says it will ask Khan to reverse the decision, but on Friday the London mayor backed the TfL.
“Any operator of private hire services in London needs to play by the rules,” he said. “I fully support TfL’s decision—it would be wrong if TfL continued to license Uber if there is any way that this could pose a threat to Londoners’ safety and security,” he said.
The petition argues that Uber drivers are licensed by the TfL and have undergone the same “enhanced background checks” as their rival black cab drivers.
“This ban shows the world that London is far from being open and is closed to innovative companies, who bring choice to consumers and work opportunities to those who need them,” the petition says.
