Robin Chase
By Robin Chase, Now: Author of Peers Inc; co-founder Veniam, vehicle mesh & co-founder former CEO Zipcar. Focus on open solutions & real-time CO2 reductions
4 days ago16 min read
If we take action, we can build a dream transportation system around self-driving cars. If we don’t, we’ll create a nightmare.
Monday, 08 August 2016 00:00 By Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-Ed
Uber, along with Lyft, stopped operating in Austin in early May after the city's voters endorsed a requirement that drivers for these services had to be fingerprinted and undergo background checks. The companies complained that the requirement placed an onerous burden on them and instead said that they would just stop operating in the city.
As a practical matter, the real issue almost certainly was not the difficulty of fingerprinting. After all, taxi companies across the country have complied with similar requirements for decades and it is unlikely that the management of these old-styled cab companies are much more competent than Uber's management.
Rather, the issue was likely that Uber is worried about its drivers being labeled as employees. Uber claims that its drivers are independent contractors, not employees. As independent contractors, Uber is not responsible for paying Social Security taxes, nor is it liable for workers' compensation for drivers who get hurt in traffic accidents. It also doesn't have to withhold income taxes. And, independent contractors don't have the right to unionize.
For all the old cliches about Teutonic efficiency, much of Germany’s transport infrastructure is in a terrible state of disrepair, and many major works have been badly botched. A chronic lack of investment is to blame (by Kate Connolly)
Um einen beziehungsweise diverse Umzüge im Leben kommt kaum irgendwer umher. Der allererste Umzug, vom Elternhaus zu einer Lehre oder in die Studentenstadt, ist hier häufig der einfachste, weil man noch unter keinen Umständen zahlreiche Einrichtungsgegenstände sowohl sonstige Alltagsgegenstände einpacken sowie umziehen muss. Allerdings sogar anschließend kann es stets erneut zu Situationen kommen, in denen der Umzug inkl. allem Hausrat vonnöten wird, bspw. weil man beruflich in einen sonstigen Ort verfrachtet wird oder man mit der besseren Hälfte in eine Wohnung zieht.
The Hindu 20 Sept 2015
"As cars increasingly become rolling software platforms, Apple and Google have depths of tech expertise that the carmakers would have trouble duplicating. And those Silicon Valley companies have financial resources that dwarf those of even behemoth companies like Daimler and Volkswagen. Google, which began working on self-driving cars in 2009, is valued by the stock market at more than five times the worth of either of those carmakers. Apple is worth eight times as much. That gives them an advantage in a business that requires huge investment in research and development."
"“Starting from sustainability, going over to digitalisation, and ending up at autonomous driving — these three big things are really something that is a game changer for the automotive industry,” Mr. Winkelmann said in an interview. “Everybody has to tackle these challenges.” — New York Times"
The taxi app faces many obstacles to its plans for city transport, making its battles with existing cab services merely the beginning
"...as [Uber] privatises an increasing proportion of transport infrastructure, public services will be abandoned to decay, with Uber providing marginally more optimised transit options (Smart Routes, UberX, UberBLACK, etc) for a profit.
While this vision of privatisation is partly correct and rather grim, it misses a key point: Uber wants in on public infrastructure. But it is considerably less clear that the company actually wants to become a utility, which would mean taking on long-term responsibility for a huge fleet of vehicles and employees. "