AUDI,UBER,LYFT,GM, DIDI AND NOW APPLES GET INTO RIDE SHARING

I have been working on car sharing with UBER and LYFT and others for months.  I believe it is more important to the China and India. Europe also has been big for BMW and Mercedes and others.

Many believe that some aspects or ride rental and sharing will eventually build demand for vehicles when many move from crowded cities to the suburbs.  I feel they are correct and that is why I feel that all manufacturers need to come up with a way to allow consumers to rent their cars or car share.

Warren Avis Sr was the founder of Avis rent a car. He had a vision and that market blossomed. Warren and I were partners for years. He was also a visionary in real estate development.  If he was still with us he would tell me to work seven days a week and bring the customers to you.

Warren Avis loved travel and he would be excited to know that UBER has a Rickshaw rental service.

Now I find more and more manufacturers buying into high tech companies to develop a larger presence in the car sharing market. Many are working together and are willing to share information to benefit the industry.

Apple made the bombshell announcement today that it has invested $1 billion in China’s top ride hailing app. Didi Chuxing (formerly called Didi Kuaidi) is often described in U.S. media as Uber’s Chinese rival, but it already dominates the market by far. The company claims it fulfilled one billion rides last year and holds 87 percent of the country’s private ride-hailing market.

APPLES CEO Tim Cook said, “We are making the investment for a number of strategic reasons, including a chance to learn more about certain segments of the China market. Of course, we believe it will deliver a strong return for our invested capital as well.”

Didi Chuxing told Reuters that this is its single largest round of funding so far. It claims to currently complete more than 11 million rides a day and have over 14 million drivers on its platform. The company’s other major investors include Tencent and Alibaba, two of China’s largest Internet companies, and SoftBank.

According to Wall Street Journal article, the company was then in the process of finalizing a round for $1 billion at a valuation of $20 billion. A Didi Chuxing representative said Apple’s investment is part of the same round, but declined to confirm the valuation. 

In a press release, Didi Chuxing founder and CEO Cheng Wei said, “The endorsement from Apple is an enormous encouragement and inspiration for our four-year-old company. DiDi will work hard with our drivers, riders and global partners, to make available to every citizen flexible and reliable mobility choices, and help cities solve transportation, environmental and employment challenges.”

China is on its way to becoming Apple’s biggest iPhone market, but the company has faced a few recent setbacks there. After years of giving it a relatively free rein for a U.S. tech company, the Chinese government ordered the closure of iBooks Store and iTunes and Movies just six months after the services launched in China.

Furthermore, while Apple’s sales in China are still growing, it’s at a much slower rate than before as the Chinese economy becomes sluggish and the smartphone market in general faces less demand. Concerns about Apple’s reliance on China prompted activist shareholder Carl Icahn to sell his entire stake in the company earlier this year.

I agree with Tech Crunch and others that Apple investing in Didi Chuxing allows Apple to grab a foothold in the Chinese tech market that reaches beyond iPhones—and also gives it a new platform for its other technology. For example, if Didi Chuxing uses CarPlay, that gives Apple another outlet to sell software services in China beside the iPhone, as well as valuable data to tailor apps and maps for Chinese users. Didi Chuxing is also a major potential customer once Apple’s self-driving car comes to fruition.

In the months past I have contacted Audi/VW, BMW, MERCEDES, Nissan , GM and all major automotive companies on what they would do with the success of “ride sharing”.  Most would not comment and then GM pays $500 million for a piece of one of the big players.

GrabTaxi, the Uber rival in Southeast Asia backed by SoftBank and China’s Didi Kuaidi, will be now be known as “Grab” after the company announced a rebranding today alongside a few new services.

The company said its new name reflects the fact that it no longer only offers licensed taxi rides, the service that it started out working with. And that’s indeed true. Over the past year or two, it has expanded its offerings to include private cars (GrabCar), motorbike taxis (GrabBike), delivery (GrabExpress) and — most recently — carpooling with GrabHitch. In addition, the company was still known as MyTeksi in Malaysia, where it originated, so that confusion will be removed, too.

“We’ve grown over the years — and we’re now much more than a taxi app. This new brand is an important evolution that represents our goal to outserve our customers. We are not only providing passengers with a transport service, we are saving them time and ensuring they have a safe ride,” Anthony Tan, Group CEO and Co-Founder of Grab, said in a statement.

According to its latest numbers, Grab — which is valued at over $1 billion based on past funding rounds — has over 200,000 drivers on its platform with more than 11 million app downloads to date across it six markets in Southeast Asia.

Beyond the new name — which, to be honest, I’m not a big fan of since “grab” is a fairly arbitrary term that’s ripe for humor — the company also officially announced a service for corporate customers, which had been in beta, and its cashless payment service, which had also been in trial. Cashless payments will initially be supported in Singapore, with Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia added in February and Thailand and Vietnam “in the first half of 2016”.

Finally, the service itself has been tweaked with Grab telling us that it now includes an auto-retry feature for when a booking isn’t made immediately, better driver tracking, and ‘flash’ — a service that automatically scans all rides types in the area to faster find “the best vehicle for users” in their locality.

Earlier this month, Grab announced an office in Seattle aimed at supplementing its team in Southeast Asia with talent from the U.S.

  

The Ola cabs app is the easiest and fastest way to book a cab or a taxi in your city. With more than 300,000 cabs in 100+ cities that include Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and more, Ola is the most popular cab booking service in India.

With a quick and smooth signup process, it won’t take you long while booking your first ride. If you’re lucky enough to get a referral code, sign up with the code to get your first ride free!

Book a taxi in just a few taps. Here’s how it works:

Set your pickup location (E.g. Home, Office, Airport, Railway station or your current location)
See different types of cabs or taxis in your location, displayed on a map

Pick the type of cab you want and tap RIDE NOW
Get instant confirmation with ride details
Track your cab as it reaches you

Once your trip ends, you can pay by cash or even better… keep your Ola Money recharged to ride cash-free! You also get a detailed cost breakdown in an invoice emailed to you.

Want to plan ahead for a taxi to airport or railway station? You can choose RIDE LATER to book a taxi in advance.

Share your ride details with your family and friends so they can track your ride and know you are safe. Leave the stress of travel to efficient and courteous drivers and enjoy your Ola ride!

We offer taxis in different categories on the Ola cabs app -

Micro: The most affordable AC cab in the country
Mini: The popular hatchback ride from Ola
Sedan: 4-seater cabs for greater comfort
Prime: Free Wi-Fi enabled sedans with top drivers

With fares starting from Rs. 6 per km, Ola is the most affordable cab booking app in India.

You can get fare details of different taxis from the app. Press and hold the category icons for the rate card. You can also get an estimated cost of your trip before booking a cab. Just tap on ‘Ride Estimate’ and enter your destination.

You can also reduce the taxi fare up to 50% by choosing Ola Share. We match you with other Ola users travelling along your route so you can share a cab. You can also choose to travel exclusively with your colleagues or classmates.

Along with Ola taxis in the app, you can also find more options to travel. We’ve partnered with local and traditional transport services to make them an integral part of our journey. You can book Kaali Peeli taxis in Mumbai and Kolkata’s yellow taxis from your app.

Now, you don’t just book taxi online, you also use the app for booking an auto rickshaw from your smartphone! You can book Ola Autos in more than 20 cities across India and ride from your doorstep. No more waiting for an auto or visiting auto stands. We’ll soon be expanding to more cities and you’ll know when we’re there.

Ola is making daily commute economical and eco-friendly with Share and Shuttle services. These services are currently available in selected cities and will soon be rolled out in major cities across India.

You can also tag work or business related rides as Corporate rides when you book cabs in the app. You’ll get invoices for these rides at your official email address. Companies can use Ola Corporate for employee travel management. They can easily track and sponsor corporate rides when employees book taxis from the app.

We are simultaneously changing the lives of those who offer rides and those who need them. People are increasingly relying on Ola’s effective services to book a taxi in their city. This is helping several drivers earn a consistent livelihood with integrity.

Visit THEIR website for more information on the Ola cabs app and other Ola services - https://help.olacabs.com/support/home

Or you can always reach them at support@olacabs.com.

I love what AUDI has been doing (and now others) offering their entire fleet for rent by the hour, day weeks.  Some of the AUDI customers in MIAMI at luxury residence loved the fact they could rent the TT Roadster for a day and then the luxurious AUDI A8 L for the week!

When I was some of INFINITI’s major players I asked them why they had not done the same. I believe once they go through my materials they will do the same.  Nissan already moves a lot of passengers around in the UNIVERSITY market. 

In Philadelphia my son Jason Bradley Hubbard works in high rise as an architect. He and others at the firm use ride sharing to get to job sites, the airport and even their residences. In Philadelphia like New York or Chicago parking is a premium.  A parking spot can cost you the price of a condo!

Parking caused problems with BMW’s ride share in San Francisco. UBER owned a lot of the parking spots.  Therefore customers who wished to rent car by hour or the day had no place to park. I understand they are working this out.

In Manhattan some of the majors have bought parking for their customers.  That makes a lot of sense.

UBER got its start as a limo service that typically cost more than traditional taxi services. But as Uber looks to add an ever more mainstream audience globally, it has added more lower-cost options, and those are now coming into their own. Uber today said that 20 percent of all of its rides globally are now on UberPool services. UberPool is the option that lets individuals order rides in cars carrying other passengers going in the same direction. Launched in 2014, Uber said in April that it had passed 100 million Pool rides.

The rise of services like UberPool — and comparable services at companies at Uber’s competitors like Lyft, Via (which is based only on group ridesharing), Ola and others — is notable because it shows that Uber might be sacrificing margin on individual rides, but it’s potentially growing the overall number of rides, giving it a larger economy of scale.

1.  

 

According to Tech Crunch it is hard to say whether UberPool is proving to be a better or worse financial bet for the company, as it does not talk financials, but the fact that Uber is continuing to promote it could be a sign of it being a useful service for the company irrespective of that: It means users are left feeling they are being given options that are more economical, and it’s a good message to the regulatory authorities and other organizations that Uber needs to recognize.

UberPool, the argument goes, is better for the environment by putting more people into fewer cars. (That’s putting aside whether drivers are happy taking UberPool passengers, one of the many driver grievances you can read about on forums like this one.)

Still, there is no denying how impressive this company is, and how they have solved what are actually crazy hard problems (all you have to do is use a number of other car-hailing apps to see that the problem does not always beget an easy and seamless solution). As a wave of startups have jumped into the smart phone space to capitalize on the rise of the “on-demand” economy, Uber has perhaps been one of the most impressive of them all. The company has raised more than $1 billion in private backing and its valuation is above $60 billion.

And yet things are not all rosy. The company has come under fire for some of the aggressive tactics that it’s used to attract drivers and users, and for how it has played it fast and loose with existing transportation and employment regulations, among other things.

Under fire was not a problem for one of the staff that helped win Obama his presidency. David Plouff can hold back critics in Autin Texas , critics on the tipping critics. He is a perfect person to move UBER forward.

In Houston both individuals and business see advantage of car sharing. Zipcar expects throughout the USA they will have one million members.  Zipcars CEO states one day a driver uses a Nissan Leaf, Fortwos, BMW electric cars then next day rents an SUV or van.   The electric cars are being used in fleets. Colleges, businesses are using Zipcars cars, trucks, vans, and commercial vehicles to save money. The investors and Hedge fund groups see the growth  of the car share business to be remarkable.

We have seen the hard drives for computers along with software start disappearing only to be stored in the “Cloud” with a high monthly fee.  Security and access to files and software is guaranteed.

BRUCE HUBBARD

AUTO ADVISOR GROUP