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Business/Finance See other Business/Finance Articles Title: Uber and BYD team up on electric car chauffeur services in US Want... Uber, the world's leading online chauffeur service provider, has confirmed it has reached an agreement with Shenzhen-based electric car maker BYD to push chauffeur services using electric cars in the United States. The agreement is a prelude to BYD's plans to promote its electric cars on the domestic front via cooperation with local online chauffeuring service providers such as Didi Dache, Kuaidi, and CAR Inc, a leading car-rental firm, a BYD executive told Shanghai's China Business News. BYD is also setting its sights on the electric bus market in both China and the US. Lauren Altmin, spokesperson for Uber, said the company in partnership with BYD launched an electric car-based chauffeur service in Chicago on a trial basis several weeks ago and aims to extend the service to other US cities later on. Green Wheels USA, the agent for BYD's e6 electric car, will assist Uber in developing the service by setting up charging stakes in Chicago, where Uber currently has 25 e6 cars in operation and hopes to have 200 by the end of the year. Uber drivers have a number of options for e6 cars — they can pay US$200 a week for the lease of the car with an option to buy later on with the rental money used to offset the purchase price. BYD hopes the cooperation with Uber can help it achieve inroads in the US electric-car market currently dominated by Tesla and Nissan's Leaf. In its efforts to promote electric vehicles for public transport, BYD has also introduced the K9 pure-electric bus to over 30 cities around the world, including New York, Los Angeles, London,and Kuala Lumpur, according to China Business News. In 2014, Stanford University bought 13 K9 buses for transport around the campus and is expected to purchase further buses this year, making it the second-largest buyer of the K9 in the US behind Los Angeles Metro, which has signed a deal with BYD for 25 of the buses. BYD is the champion of the electric car market in China, selling 21,000 vehicles in 2014 to account for 30% of the nation's new-energy car market. Poster Comment: Here is part of my proposed message to local politicos and please comment/critique my proposal: If Uber expands its plan and makes "every" driver's car an Uber taxi and develops an APPs communication system which coordinates place of pickup and destination with that of the U "taxi" then this would substantially reduce the need for subsidized public transit as well as greatly reduce the number of (single person) cars on the road and costs of operating a motor vehicle. This paradigm shift would depend on the success Uber would have in forming a "club" whose drivers and riders would be selected on the basis of acceptable social behavior, excluding those with a criminal record, particularly one with violence; members, for example, would be obligated to veto club membership of any applicant who engaged in any form of antisocial behavior, including bullying. Once everyone knows that acceptable social behavior is absolutely necessary for a highly desirable privilege like Uber's much lower transportation cost as well as enormously more efficient service taxpayers will be seeing big savings not only on public transport facilities but in policing. judicial system and health costs. The Uber concept has tremendous potential not only for making transport more efficient and less costly for individuals but also in terms of reducing motor vehicle pollution and its carbon footprint and as well as building a club/community spirit. Therefore it deserves a legislative bill of its own so Uber personnel can concentrate on optimizing it and not have to go through hassles with individual municipalities. An Uber system may do for transportation what Microsoft and Google have done in communications. Uber has the potential to introduce more members of a community to one another to bring about a spirit of co-operation, resourcefulness and helpfulness which chacterized the pioneers in North America and which today has been replaced by a meddlesome, initiative-stifling bureaucracy. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
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