On the applications of VTC platforms, we can now book a taxi race. Everyone is looking for a solution to the lack of drivers.
by Sophie Fay
The war between taxis and VTC is relaunched … in a new form. Since October 2022, the Uber application has offered its Ile -de -France customers to choose whether they want to move in sedan, van or… by taxi. If you opt for this solution, it is a taxi with its Lumignon – often a G7 – which moves and you pay the race according to the price displayed on the taximeter. Advantage: the driver can use the corridors of the bus, and therefore save you time. When Uber’s prices fly away because the demand is high, the price of taxis remains supervised by the counter.
uber is not the only app to offer this option. Freenow, who started in Germany under the name of Mytaxi, an Application intended to book taxis, was the first to offer the option from June 2022. The German group, a subsidiary of BMW and Daimler, claims 1 500 taxi drivers active on its platform. Uber launched four months ago and has 1,200 registered drivers.
Among the taxi drivers, discussions are going well: should we join Uber, Freenow or Bolt to optimize the number of races and finish your day earlier? Or, on the contrary, do you have to undertake everything to maintain the waterproofing between the two services? Yet affiliated to G7, Issam chose the first option. This young professional highlights an advantage proposed by Uber: on this app, the driver sees the starting point for the race but also that of arrival. What he does not see when ordering a taxi on the G7 app. He also notes that he can take an Uber race before having finished the previous one, when he must have deposited his client with G7. He therefore plays on the two tables. 2>
500 euros for a sponsorship
But above all, he takes advantage of the Uber campaign to “flirt” the drivers: a bonus of 250 euros for activation of the account, an offer of 500 euros for the sponsorship of a colleague and 500 euros for This colleague after 50 races, “what goes fast”, specifies Issam. For the moment, he does not pay commissions and hopes that it will remain as it is, with perhaps a monthly subscription system as for G7. It would not remain on this platform with a 25 % sample on races like Uber the practice for VTC drivers. From the 1 er February, the latter obtained a minimum income per race of 7.65 euros.
Conversely, Adel, Taxi G7 too, refuses to give in to the sirens of Uber or Freenow. For him, these platforms have only one objective: to have enough taxis in their ranks to request the same advantages from the Ministry of Transport, namely the use of bus corridors, the possibility of doing approved transport, Supported by social security, or even the benefit of the premiums offered to buy a vehicle accessible to people with reduced mobility, or 40 % of the acquisition cost up to 16,500 euros for an electric motor.
“This is not the subject, specifies the spokesperson for Uber. We simply need more drivers available to meet demand. Tourists have returned, international customers in particular represented 25 % Races this summer against 20 % before the COVVI-19. “The CEO of G7, Nicolas Rousselet, observes, serene, this competition, convinced to be protected by a good application and by the revival of its services. He mainly draws up the same observation: “Last year, the demand increased by almost 20 % compared to 2019. And we made a very good month of January, when it is usually a hollow period.”
“At this rate, in June, we will lack taxis,” he said. Out of 19,000 taxis in Ile-de-France, nearly 4,108 chose the transported transport, especially in the big suburbs. There are also between 600 and 1,000 retirements per year. He therefore asked the government to issue 600 additional licenses per year – a doubling – for five years. This figure would comply with the protocol signed with the State in May 2008, which planned to vary the number of licenses, now free and non -abduction, depending on activity indicators. It was dormant during the pandemic.