Sound like a nice idea, but unfortunately taxis are a regulated industry in most major cities (e.g. NYC, Boston, Chicago). The difference between a taxi and non-taxi are usually that a taxi license or medallion is required in order to legally stop for somebody hailing down a cab on a street.

If this service became at all popular, it is very likely that cities would immediately include "mobile hailing" as also requiring a license. The entrenched interests of the taxi companies are simply too big (and they have the political clout) to let this one slide under the radar.

a friend of a good friend of mine was brutally raped by an independent Lincoln Town Car licensed driver (in NYC). I would advise (my personal opinion) women to avoid such services and deal with the hassle of getting a cab. Getting into a stranger's car and closing the door behind you is an action that should not be taken lightly. That is why I always take a taxi or use a well-established car service (as in substantial with a fleet of cars) instead of trusting someone who is able to drive you around because he/she filled out an application and leased a fancy black car. At least there is some accountability with taxi and fleet drivers. And unless UberCab does serious due dilligence on their drivers (perhaps they do?), I would stay away from this service (again, if I were a woman).

Edit: Please note that I do not mean to imply that all car drivers are bad people. I am confident that the majority of them are good, honest people trying to make a living the best way they can.

Driving a gypsy cab (which is what ubercab is) is a dangerous business. In the 90's, New York averaged something like 2 murdered cabbies a month. And those drivers were only being robbed for a small amount of cash.

This application could be very attractive for car jackers. A bad guy could simply place and order for an out-of-the-way alley or warehouse and know that the cabbie they hail is going to be driving a really nice car.

A would-be car jacker would need to use a stolen iPhone and credit card in order to keep from getting caught right away, but that's hardly an insurmountable barrier.

I used cabulous to hail a cab in San Francisco this weekend. Very similar service, but uses medallion taxis with regular meter rates. You have to pay the driver normally. It was a great experience and I imagine these types of services will be commodity eventually.

Here's a great article on the biggest car service in Brooklyn-- Arecibo (their base station is around the corner from where I live). Many interesting details about the economics, technology, and politics of the livery business in NYC:

http://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/54678/

From a safety perspective, in NYC it's illegal (and not a good idea) to hail a non-yellow-medallioned taxi on the street. They likely don't have a TLC license, and may or may not be affiliated with a larger fleet.

Call the service's base station--they might not perform background checks on the drivers, but they'll be licensed and insured. The services have an incentive to weed out the bad drivers-- if they get a reputation for spotty service or creepy guys, then customers will switch to the car service down the block (there is healthy competition in this market-- they are constantly splitting off and trying to poach each others' drivers).

Just thinking about what forces might prevent the industry from being disrupted (regardless of whether/how this is good for the public):

I think the biggest innovation is the drivers rating the customers. It seems like a joke, but if you think about it, professional car service drivers aren't going to want to pick up just anybody for short rides. That's the real obstacle for scalability among that group. The obstacle for getting all cab drivers to join UberCab is probably the risk of alienating the customer base that might just want town cars, etc., without having to think about the complexity (i.e., it's a software problem, and a pretty easy software problem if done right). The other obstacle is the cost of an iphone, etc., for cab drivers. The obstacles for anybody with a car to join are medallions, licenses, etc., as mentioned. The other obstacle is, even with licenses, the fairness and effectiveness of the rating system is tough. Service history is a mixed blessing. When I step into a cab, I may not actually want to know about the driver's history. I may just want a nearly 100% guaranteed level of service (which theoretically the medallions provide). Though on the other hand it would be crazy to see like average on-time trips, average speeds, customer satisfactions, etc., in one big visual thumbprint before you step into a cab...

Is “everyone could be a cabbie” really such a lucrative prospect, from the drivers’ point of view? My understanding is that when you take into account the uncertainty of income, the fixed cost of leasing and maintaining a cab (of course, part of this is the cost of leasing the medallion), and the risk of passengers attacking you or simply not paying, cab drivers don’t net that much money... which may be one reason why, at least in Boston and NYC, cabbies tend to be immigrants.

I'd think of this as more on-demand towncar than a new type of taxi-disrupting the limo business rings far more true. For the slightly upscale customer who wants privacy and looks and can pay a bit more. And not for women, dear god no. But women don't use technology anyway, right?

I was thinking about a similar idea and also the parallel concept of "AirBnB for passenger seats", rather than unused towncar inventory, an easier way to "book" a carpool ride from someone who's already going that way. You just run into a ton of tangles around insurance, carpooling vs taxi licenses, scaling especially abroad, and the fact that one bad driver - one accident - could completely ruin your entire business.

I do think there's potential in disrupting the taxi business, though my current angle of thought is more about using technology, especially cleantech and mobile bookings, to make it a low cost planet-friendly business. Just the thought of all those exhaust fumes scares me. Go EcoTaxis!

The first time an UberCab driver gets into a wreck without insurance or licensing should be interesting. I can see this being very useful for legitimate car services, but they need to do serious due diligence to make sure their drivers are legitimate. Mike's dream of anyone becoming an UberCab driver would be a legal nightmare.

The taxi medalion is a little more than a price fix in some cities, such as London.

Buying from somebody wih a zero rep on ebay means you might lose out on your beanie baby. Putting your daughter in a random strangers car with no information other than them owning (or having stolen) an iphone is a little different.

I've tried Ubercab a bunch of times, and the two times I actualy got a cab were a good experience. It's really nice not having to fumble with cash or a card for payment. Plus you get to ride in a towncar/SUV/etc. It is a bit more expensive though.

It's a cool idea. And an evolution of black car service (they have to be called and don't normally solicit for work).

As like any other hire service, they operate under a difference set of rules. They have to be licensed, need to meet size requirements, and they have to carry much more insurance.

Some random driver with a pickup and just basic PIP coverage probably wouldn't be a good choice. Especially if you are paying for it.

Also, reading their website, they are very interested in working with limo companies and cab services not random guy with 30 minutes to spare. So no, this is not like AirBNB, at all.

It'll be really interesting to how much disintermediation takes place as a result of UberCab. I expect they'd need to expand beyond iOS to get scale but that should be possible.

In the UK there are lots of regulations surrounding Private Hire vehicles and Taxis, some of those rules are regional too. I doubt I'd see something, like this here but the firms should definitely be aware.

Various commenters are saying that cities would simply define "mobile hailing" as also requiring a license. Okay, maybe, but would it matter? How would it be enforced? And could any particular city hold UberCab liable? Enough to force them to stop?

The whole concept sounds particularly disruptive because it seems that it would be so difficult to police.

This may work in SFO. But does anyone know if the town car companies in NYC (Dial 7, Carmel etc etc etc) have overcapacity issues?

In the everyone is a taxi model- do you really want to get into a car without knowing how that person drives? There are people in my own family I won't drive with, let alone pay them to drive me somewhere.

This will work in SF because taxis don't do a good job for the class of people who own iPhones. In NYC, the class of people who own iPhones are already well-served by cabs.

I worry about them getting AirBnB'ed. I'm a big fan of AirBnB and CS, and I've often thought I'd be happy to do a fare when I've got a hour or so between meetings.

I thought about building something like this.

Pay from the app: No cash required

That's a powerful feature and it could become a very sticky app for me if I lived in San Francisco.

It's illegal to drive and text message in California; their drivers more or less have to break the law to participate.

what I like about this is the rider has an iPhone so while the cabbie is transporting him the rider can see the Google Maps routing path, and compare that to the actual position and route the cabbie is taking. If they differ significantly the rider can know he's getting scammed. Technically the rider could do this without UberTaxi as long as he has an iPhone, but since UberTaxi depends on the rider having an iPhone app, it comes along for free.

this is practical innovation. we need more startups like this.

This article has to be read very carefully. Near the beginning it says:

UberCab contracts with black car services – mostly Towncars and Escalades

That suggests that they are probably doing some due diligence.

My friends the management consultants report that they use these black-car services all the time. You think a business traveler with a big expense account hails one of those yellow cabs, like me and the rest of the plebes? ;)

The follow-up idea of dispatching cab traffic to any random idiot with a Lincoln Town Car, an iPhone, and a possible drug problem seems to be Arrington's idea. It is, as you point out, a pretty lousy idea. [1] But don't blame UberCab.

---

[1] I should know. I had this idea five years ago. Then I conducted a thirty-minute thought experiment and decided that the due diligence would be annoying and not my cup of tea.

It seems that the rating system might have prevented this... maybe others thought the driver was "creepy", etc. and might have given him/her a bad rating, which might have dissuaded your friend from choosing his/her car.

Also - learn martial arts. I took Krav Maga, there were plenty of women in the class, and the techniques translate well to self defense even if you're not as big or strong as your assailant. They teach you to attack vulnerable areas - eyes and groin in particular - and how to break chokes, deal with someone trying to pick you up off the ground, things like that. Everyone who travels or otherwise has a not 100% safe routine should take 10-20 martial arts classes. Might save your life.

Edit: Can't resist an anecdote. There was a huge Russian instructor in one of our classes, and the class that day was about half women. He said, "Ok, man tries to rape you? Rip his eyes, like this. See? Rip! He can't see now for rest of life? Tough shit! Should not have tried rape you."

(Despite the machismo of how this might look in text, it was well received in person - a good community, good people, good training, very welcoming to everyone at any level of age or fitness. Definitely recommended, almost any studio will give you a free class so just google for your area and go take one. Really, it's awesome.)

It used to be standard advice in women's self-defense classes (e.g., http://modelmugging.org/) to avoid at all costs being coerced into a vehicle. Being in a vehicle with an assailant was said to lower your odds of escaping considerably.

You're quick to dismiss all prospects for a mobile-device-assisted reputation system based on v1; assume instead that it iterates a number of times and eventually chiefly helps the dispatchers identify bad actors, rather than customers.

With digital cameras and other low-cost person and location tracking technologies, it's not easy for drivers to take riders on any ride other than that which was contracted, nor for providers with bad reputations to borrow the identities of others. Branded quoted dispatching has returns to scale -- perhaps it's even a natural monopoly -- and incentives for self-policing. So bad actors can't just hop to another of multiple dispatchers and get the same amount of business.

Floating rates and open entry can restore service to areas that regulated rates sometimes cause to be unserved -- because they're comparatively hard to get to or dangerous, and there's plenty of business elsewhere.

And finally, for all the supposed protections provided by regulation, a city with strict regulations will also have a bunch of gypsy and counterfeit cabs -- and in SF, if local media reports here are to be believed, many of these are indistinguishable from the 'real' thing, even by most police/enforcers. You get in one -- and you get indistinguishable service as from other cabs, because the operators want to be cabbies, not robbers. And yet -- iPhone dispatching could give out a 1-time single-word-password more secure than any cab 'dress'. So if this were really something to be scared of, a branded iPhone dispatcher can provide more assuarance than the city medallion authority.

There is a valid concern at the heart of taxi licensing -- but it long ago grew into primarily a cartel, using that original justification to enrich incumbents, doing more damage than benefit. And, the restricted medaliion program is a solution from another era; let us try to get the same benefits with new tools, and see how it works.

A very simple replacement system: unlimited medallions will be issued. The cost of a medallion is the cost of policing 1 driver (e.g., 1 random inspection per month, background check, car safety, etc) + 15% profit for the city. Prices will be set at market rates, but must be fully disclosed to passengers before the ride.