You can make as much fun as you want about Germans not setting foot on the lawn because it's verboten, but law (and order) is really a thing here.
When a company openly breaks the law (and is even smug enough to brag about it), most of the people take a strong dislike to it.
Intentionally breaking the law, in order to quickly get too big too punish seems to work in the US sometimes, because "evil government". In Europe you're in for a lot of trouble, because "evil corporation".
Another thing I'd like to point out:
"The company has argued it can add thousands of new jobs to Germany if it is allowed to operate freely"
Since the social net is still pretty strong, there is maybe less pressure to add jobs no matter the cost.
And we as a society need to talk about which jobs are even worth existing. I'm not saying that Uber driver is necessarily a bad job, but "because jobs" is only one important part of the argument. The other parts are "what kind of job?", "what wages?", "what kinds of externalities?", sometimes even human dignity.
I'd also question how Uber defines job here. Something tells me those thousands of jobs they're thinking of might not be full-time jobs providing a wage you can live on.
I don't know how current this information is, but the few times I used Uber, I got regular taxis. That was in Berlin a few months ago. So at least during that time, Uber was yet another taxi app, with no USP at all.
It doesn't surprise me in the least. Germany is a country of insane regulations and rules. They absolutely love paperwork - all the Germans apologized to me when I first moved here and set everything up - and have a very strict way of operating. The American way of doing things, as the article briefly mentions, is very different. I'm not saying it is better or worse, just different. This is a cultural thing that doesn't magically change overnight. I know I still get annoyed at how different things are sometimes compared with back in North America, but that is the way things operate here and you have to learn to play the game otherwise you will lose.
The credit card thing is also true too. Cash is king here and I routinely see people with hundreds of Euros of cash like it is nothing. I always see people paying for groceries with 100 Euro notes. Furthermore, I know Germans are much more concerned with personal security and privacy that there is also going to be a push back about having to share personal information with an American company.
Also I live in Frankfurt, and, to be honest, I have no idea why people even use taxis. To get from the Hauptbahnhof to practically anywhere in the city is only a < 20 minute U-Bahn ride. Also, the public transportation in Europe tends to be insanely good and efficient so a ride-sharing app will also have to compete with this as well.
And then the taxi companies actually provide a neat app which tells you how much the ride will cost, and allows you to book from your phone directly in Germany (taxi.eu).
It’s hard to justify uber when they have the same comfort, same prices, but treat employees worse, and refuse to operate within the same laws.
Uber only has advantages in the areas where they can provide cheaper prices, and they often can only provide these by breaking rules (like the insurance in the beginning) or by mistreating employees (which they classify as "subcontractors". This Scheinselbstständigkeit is going to lead to legal issues for uber in the future, too).
And, additionally, while local taxi companies can operate on small margins – and the profit ends up back in the local economy – Uber has investors at Wall Street to please, and their profit ends up in New York, not in the local economies.
Really? I've helped a couple european companies setup US operations and they all complain about the over-regulated and bureaucratic approach in the US. They find tax and immigration paperwork, and I mean literal PAPERwork, very unsettling.
Want to setup a farm, as farmer? You’ll have to register with the Katasteramt, Tierseuchenfonds, the Sozialversicherung für Landwirtschaft, Forsten und Gartenbau, and most of them require you to tell them the same stuff 3 or 4 times.
Germany could improve a lot in bureaucratic things.
My mum – working in the emphasized agency – often has to actually call the other agencies frequently to check their data (as it’s often inconsistent)
The famous database class lesson of "duplication always leads to inconsistency" doesn’t seem to have been heard by the people who administrate this stuff.
I guess it depends. Setting up a business in Germany might be easier (haven't done it so I don't know, but there's a good startup culture in Berlin so I guess it's possible), but as someone who has lived in Berlin I know there's a lot of pain and procedure to get set up as a resident, get a bank account, and so on.
As an example, to find somewhere to rent on your own, you need a German bank account to pay your rent with. To get a German bank account, you need to register as a resident with a specific address. Supposedly you need to do that within 14 days of entering the city, but when I last looked the wait to book an appointment online to register was a couple months.
As an Australian I have to agree. The USA bureaucracy is like the old joke about having the requirements of the Germans with the efficiency of the Italians served with the helpfulness of the English.
It depends. There's a ton less bureaucracy involved with a blue card in Germany compared to an H1B visa in the US; on the other hand, the requirements for (say) a fishing license in Germany are borderline ridiculous [1].
That actually doesn't see that bad. It's effort, but at least it is predictable and clearly laid out ... very German imho. In the US things are generally more opaque, requiring experts (lawyers, even lobbyists) to explain how various agencies actually operate. Without that advice, most of the paperwork is either incorrect, unnecessary, or won't ever allow your issue to progress.
Try looking up the procedures for an EB-5 visa application. They don't mention that, since the prez made certain statements re deportations, the immigration people are going nuts. Each and every step is being examined as if your client was trying to export uranium.
Uber's problem is different. Uber-like services have been legal in Germany since pretty much forever (and many cities don't even have a cap on medallions for a straight-up taxi service). But Uber's business model is built around evading regulatory costs that their competitors have to deal with, and this is where Germany isn't budging.
First, a chauffeur's license is required to operate a taxi (or bus, or ambulance). This license is actually pretty straightforward to get and runs only to a few hundred Euro (renewable after five years), and the requirements are reasonable (no criminal record, good health/vision, knowledge test). These costs are a pittance for a normal taxi business, but pretty steep for a private person who only wants to moonlight as a driver every so often.
Second, insurance. There are strict insurance requirements for cars, and a private insurance generally does not cover commercial use of a car; Uber, for some reason, has been unwilling to foot the bill.
Third, taxis have to undergo annual roadworthiness tests (private cars are only required to have them every other year).
Overall, these are mostly pretty sensible regulations that are primarily concerned with passenger safety and welfare. So there is little interest in cutting back on them. But Uber's business model isn't compatible with that.
It's been around since ca. 2011 and for the passenger side offers the same ease-of-use as Uber does, but results in rides with real taxis along with all the protections, insurances and guarantees they involve.
And all the German rules make sense, right? None of the rules could possibly be inefficient or written decades ago for a system that has since evolved?
I don't know that all of the german taxi rules make sense, but compared to what i've seen in the USA the german taxi system works amazingly well, leaves passengers well-protected and from talks with the drivers, them happy.
Well, the cheaper option is a bike or public transit.
Taxi costs are hard to get cheaper – Taxi drivers already get the cars for almost free, most of the costs are minimum wage and the 8$ per gallon gasoline. (Plus maintenance, inspections and insurance)
Even if they're inefficient or written decades ago, you're not justified to break them. You don't get to ignore the rules just because you don't like them. This is now how society works. If you want to change them, use proper channels.
Moreover, laws are not cat-sharing webapps. If you commit your rash change and break a build, there goes your afternoon. If you update the law this way, you will ruin many lives. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work for society, and actors who casually ignore the law should be punished severely.
And I guess that is the reason they will eventually flop everywhere. Uber has no strong lock-in business model, so any other service can compete with them.
By the way, I choked while reading this part of the Uber wikipedia page:
> During the initial development of the Uber app, the company created a think tank consisting of a nuclear physicist, a computational neurosurgeon, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting demand for private hire car drivers and where demand is highest.
Actually it seems like black car regulations designed for protecting taxi. There's a law there that requires a driver to drive back to their "base" before picking up again. That means the Uber drivers often need to spend an extra hour of driving for each trip, where taxis don't. Regulations like that don't do anything for safety, they exist only to protect an entrenched industry. They aren't being beaten by competition, they're being beaten by suspect regulation.
That's why Uber later tried to hire regular Taxi drivers.
And yes, the regulations exist to protect the taxis from competition, but in turn taxis have rules they have to follow. E.g. they are not allowed to turn you down if they don't like where you are going, because they are considered part of the local transport infrastructure that has to be available. Since they have to take "bad" jobs, they get some protection from others taking only the profitable ones.
That is very interesting to know, especially since i always ask taxi drivers if they're ok with taking me where i want to go. Aside from a simple "yes", the only other answer i've gotten so far was "i don't care, thanks to the phone apps i can get rides anywhere and will likely be able to get a passenger for at least part of the way back".
The only thing Uber has a problem with is encouraging people to play taxi with their private car using private insurance. That's not allowed for very good reason, the other services they offer work fine.
The taxi market is heavily but well regulated. As a consumer Uber offers no improvement apart from potentially temporarily lower prices in the short term.
There are a lot of reasons why Uber doesn't really work in Germany, most of them listed here already. One I'd like to add is, at least from my experience in Berlin, taxis here are already what you'd get by paying the premium for "Uber Black" — Mercedes E-Class, super clean, super comfortable, driven by professionals and not very expensive. This is a world of difference from, say, Australia, where the taxis are dirty, unsafe, and driven by a workforce that has a big stimulant drug-use problem (of course this is a generalisation, but I've caught enough taxis in Australia to come across all of this a few times, and it's certainly not uncommon).
In other words, there are places like Australia that desperately need Uber and the competition it brings to taxi companies. Germany doesn't have this need, and Uber doesn't bring much to the table compared to what is already available.
I was in Berlin earlier last year and I was surprised at just how excellent the taxi's were, especially in comparison to the UK. As you say, all clean, high quality cars.
Ditto, was in Berlin recently and was very impressed by the taxi service. The taxi driver slowed down and asked us if we needed a ride, was patient when we got out our address on our phones for the AirBnB, and even suggested a faster route. He gave us a detailed explanation of the cultural sites in the area. €11.80 to take two people with 4 luggage bags about 5 kilometers.
Driving a taxi in Germany is pretty much a minimum wage job (or close). There's not much room for cutting costs.
The Mercedes E-Class aspect is a bit misleading; Mercedes offers cars to German taxi companies at a pretty hefty discount (as long as they are used as taxis for at least one year), which is why they're so popular.
Just a remark on credit cards in Europe: yes, they are less common than in the US. However, this is mostly because Europeans use "EC cards" instead, which mostly work like debit cards except that they are issued by the banks themselves without an intermediary like Visa or Mastercard.
From my experience most Germans don't own a credit card. Everybody owns a EC card (since it's your normal bank card) but most people only use them if circumstances prevented them from carrying sufficient cash (unplanned big purchase etc).
Card use is on the rise, but it's far from the norm
Do you realize that EC cards are either Maestro (MasterCard) or V pay (VISA)? Also you shouldn't make generalization about "Europe", payment habits vary greatly between neighboring countries (Germans' love for cash baffles me and most my non-German coworkers).
Taxis in Germany are just different. From someone who has lived in both SF and Berlin recently, here is the summary:
Berlin: almost all taxis are Mercedes E-Class. super clean, drivers are very friendly, interesting to talk to, seem educated. they drive calmly and professionally. the experience makes you feel good and I always tip generously.
SF: taxis are nasty. I don't want to touch anything inside the car, the seats are covered in plastic "puke" covers, the seat belts are hard to use, the driver claims he does not take credit cards even though he has a credit card machine. he might refuse to take you to certain areas, just cause. sometimes the drivers themselves are dirty, they smell like they haven't showered in a week, they are eating while driving. the car smells like pot or cigarette smoke. I feel bad for the drivers, they look like they are just barely getting by, and they are often angry and drive extremely aggressively. I guess when you are just scraping by financially as a taxi driver in SF, every second counts. I'm always surprised we didn't get into an accident.
In smaller cities, you'll wish you had Uber. Most taxis speak little english (hard to communicate where you're going without just handing them your phone with the address in it), they don't always take card or like doing so (I had a guy who after mumbling something nasty used a manual imprinter on my card) and have generally given me bad service.
Never had those issues with Uber when it was available in more places. I've moved to using Blacklane whenever I can, but they're worse than Uber.
But those are only problems foreigners have with German taxis. Germans prefer paying with cash and don't care if the driver speaks good English. As a German the only bad experience I have ever had with a taxi was a driver taking the long way around. Apart from that our taxi services are great for Germans.
Of course the experience for foreigners is important, but it will neither make not brake any taxi company.
Don't blame the taxi drivers, it's widely known that Germans don't like cash-less payments, and much less credit cards. Partially because of surveillance and partially because unlike the US, you have to have excellent credit reports to get a true CC and not prepaid/debit CCs.
I've said it elsewhere, but I'll say it again: Uber's endgame is not in the disruption of the taxi industry. They are really a logistics company. Once the regulations catch up with them, they will be providing a logistics service for taxis (and possibly for trucking and deliveries). They are disrupting the antiquated software / infrastructure involved in the dispatching and operations of taxis. The initial competition with taxis is a temporary way of forcing them to adopt the new software / infrastructure.
In Germany the logistics of taxi management are already far beyond what we see in the US. The value proposition is lower for both rider and driver. It would be interesting to learn about the companies involved in that market. (Who makes the dispatching radios, software vendors, profit margins, etc.)
Uber's endgame is to roll out globally with an attractive platform for users and an enticing offer for drivers, gain a dominant market share in as many markets as possible, then steadily replace all human drivers with self-driving cars. This will happen over the next several decades.
At that point, the company will maintain service centers for their fleets, whose maintenance costs will be low enough to significantly increase their profit margins. Those larger profits will, of course, flow to the relatively small number of shareholders instead of being distributed among a larger human workforce, as they are currently.
Listen to Peter Thiel. The endgame for superlative companies is monopoly.
And in Germany, where some of the largest Taxi dispatch services are already owned by the car manufacturers (Mercedes has a majority share in MyTaxi, for example), this is also possible – and without Uber ever being able to compete, as they can never be as cheap as a car manufacturer doing everything, from every bolt and screw to the taxi in-house.
58 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 91.9 ms ] threadWhen a company openly breaks the law (and is even smug enough to brag about it), most of the people take a strong dislike to it.
Intentionally breaking the law, in order to quickly get too big too punish seems to work in the US sometimes, because "evil government". In Europe you're in for a lot of trouble, because "evil corporation".
Since the social net is still pretty strong, there is maybe less pressure to add jobs no matter the cost.
And we as a society need to talk about which jobs are even worth existing. I'm not saying that Uber driver is necessarily a bad job, but "because jobs" is only one important part of the argument. The other parts are "what kind of job?", "what wages?", "what kinds of externalities?", sometimes even human dignity.
The credit card thing is also true too. Cash is king here and I routinely see people with hundreds of Euros of cash like it is nothing. I always see people paying for groceries with 100 Euro notes. Furthermore, I know Germans are much more concerned with personal security and privacy that there is also going to be a push back about having to share personal information with an American company.
Also I live in Frankfurt, and, to be honest, I have no idea why people even use taxis. To get from the Hauptbahnhof to practically anywhere in the city is only a < 20 minute U-Bahn ride. Also, the public transportation in Europe tends to be insanely good and efficient so a ride-sharing app will also have to compete with this as well.
It’s hard to justify uber when they have the same comfort, same prices, but treat employees worse, and refuse to operate within the same laws.
Uber only has advantages in the areas where they can provide cheaper prices, and they often can only provide these by breaking rules (like the insurance in the beginning) or by mistreating employees (which they classify as "subcontractors". This Scheinselbstständigkeit is going to lead to legal issues for uber in the future, too).
And, additionally, while local taxi companies can operate on small margins – and the profit ends up back in the local economy – Uber has investors at Wall Street to please, and their profit ends up in New York, not in the local economies.
Want to setup a farm, as farmer? You’ll have to register with the Katasteramt, Tierseuchenfonds, the Sozialversicherung für Landwirtschaft, Forsten und Gartenbau, and most of them require you to tell them the same stuff 3 or 4 times.
Germany could improve a lot in bureaucratic things.
My mum – working in the emphasized agency – often has to actually call the other agencies frequently to check their data (as it’s often inconsistent)
The famous database class lesson of "duplication always leads to inconsistency" doesn’t seem to have been heard by the people who administrate this stuff.
As an example, to find somewhere to rent on your own, you need a German bank account to pay your rent with. To get a German bank account, you need to register as a resident with a specific address. Supposedly you need to do that within 14 days of entering the city, but when I last looked the wait to book an appointment online to register was a couple months.
[1] http://fishinggermany.jimdo.com/taking-my-german-fishing-lic...
Try looking up the procedures for an EB-5 visa application. They don't mention that, since the prez made certain statements re deportations, the immigration people are going nuts. Each and every step is being examined as if your client was trying to export uranium.
Even if you didn't mean to say it, you did, and likely thought it. I recommend improving your delivery. :)
First, a chauffeur's license is required to operate a taxi (or bus, or ambulance). This license is actually pretty straightforward to get and runs only to a few hundred Euro (renewable after five years), and the requirements are reasonable (no criminal record, good health/vision, knowledge test). These costs are a pittance for a normal taxi business, but pretty steep for a private person who only wants to moonlight as a driver every so often.
Second, insurance. There are strict insurance requirements for cars, and a private insurance generally does not cover commercial use of a car; Uber, for some reason, has been unwilling to foot the bill.
Third, taxis have to undergo annual roadworthiness tests (private cars are only required to have them every other year).
Overall, these are mostly pretty sensible regulations that are primarily concerned with passenger safety and welfare. So there is little interest in cutting back on them. But Uber's business model isn't compatible with that.
http://www.taxi.eu/en/
It's been around since ca. 2011 and for the passenger side offers the same ease-of-use as Uber does, but results in rides with real taxis along with all the protections, insurances and guarantees they involve.
For no extra cost.
Their only advantage in Germany is price.
But they can only offer that advantage by breaking the rules.
And breaking the rules in Germany is one of the most stupid things you can do, as people will end up refusing to use your service due to that.
But of course a valid alternative exists here in Berlin (public transport), which is absent in the US.
The taxis in Germany are definitely cleaner and more maintained. But man, I just wish there was some kind of cheaper option.
Taxi costs are hard to get cheaper – Taxi drivers already get the cars for almost free, most of the costs are minimum wage and the 8$ per gallon gasoline. (Plus maintenance, inspections and insurance)
Moreover, laws are not cat-sharing webapps. If you commit your rash change and break a build, there goes your afternoon. If you update the law this way, you will ruin many lives. "Move fast and break things" doesn't work for society, and actors who casually ignore the law should be punished severely.
By the way, I choked while reading this part of the Uber wikipedia page:
> During the initial development of the Uber app, the company created a think tank consisting of a nuclear physicist, a computational neurosurgeon, and a machinery expert who worked on predicting demand for private hire car drivers and where demand is highest.
And yes, the regulations exist to protect the taxis from competition, but in turn taxis have rules they have to follow. E.g. they are not allowed to turn you down if they don't like where you are going, because they are considered part of the local transport infrastructure that has to be available. Since they have to take "bad" jobs, they get some protection from others taking only the profitable ones.
The taxi market is heavily but well regulated. As a consumer Uber offers no improvement apart from potentially temporarily lower prices in the short term.
In other words, there are places like Australia that desperately need Uber and the competition it brings to taxi companies. Germany doesn't have this need, and Uber doesn't bring much to the table compared to what is already available.
Personally, I would love to pay a cheaper price for a less comfortable trip. I don't need to ride in a freshly washed 2012 Mercedes E-class.
The Mercedes E-Class aspect is a bit misleading; Mercedes offers cars to German taxi companies at a pretty hefty discount (as long as they are used as taxis for at least one year), which is why they're so popular.
Taxi prices across Germany are similar.
Card use is on the rise, but it's far from the norm
Berlin: almost all taxis are Mercedes E-Class. super clean, drivers are very friendly, interesting to talk to, seem educated. they drive calmly and professionally. the experience makes you feel good and I always tip generously.
SF: taxis are nasty. I don't want to touch anything inside the car, the seats are covered in plastic "puke" covers, the seat belts are hard to use, the driver claims he does not take credit cards even though he has a credit card machine. he might refuse to take you to certain areas, just cause. sometimes the drivers themselves are dirty, they smell like they haven't showered in a week, they are eating while driving. the car smells like pot or cigarette smoke. I feel bad for the drivers, they look like they are just barely getting by, and they are often angry and drive extremely aggressively. I guess when you are just scraping by financially as a taxi driver in SF, every second counts. I'm always surprised we didn't get into an accident.
In smaller cities, you'll wish you had Uber. Most taxis speak little english (hard to communicate where you're going without just handing them your phone with the address in it), they don't always take card or like doing so (I had a guy who after mumbling something nasty used a manual imprinter on my card) and have generally given me bad service.
Never had those issues with Uber when it was available in more places. I've moved to using Blacklane whenever I can, but they're worse than Uber.
Of course the experience for foreigners is important, but it will neither make not brake any taxi company.
Don't blame the taxi drivers, it's widely known that Germans don't like cash-less payments, and much less credit cards. Partially because of surveillance and partially because unlike the US, you have to have excellent credit reports to get a true CC and not prepaid/debit CCs.
In Germany the logistics of taxi management are already far beyond what we see in the US. The value proposition is lower for both rider and driver. It would be interesting to learn about the companies involved in that market. (Who makes the dispatching radios, software vendors, profit margins, etc.)
On my more cynical days, I've convinced myself that their true endgame is an Enron-sized fraud.
Somewhat unfair... and yet.
At that point, the company will maintain service centers for their fleets, whose maintenance costs will be low enough to significantly increase their profit margins. Those larger profits will, of course, flow to the relatively small number of shareholders instead of being distributed among a larger human workforce, as they are currently.
Listen to Peter Thiel. The endgame for superlative companies is monopoly.