Uber keeps driving the transportation agenda

Uber has announced a subscription payment method that combines its transport services with others such as food delivery or bicycles and scooter hire. Uber Pass is not a flat rate scheme as such, because in the case of its best known product, transportation, it only provides a stable rate subjected to a discount and independently of the traffic conditions, but it is further proof of those already made by the company to strengthen its product within a transport as a service model, aiming to become the first option for transportation of any type, whether car, food delivery, personal micromobility, or lately, for grocery shopping.

Uber’s strategy is clearly to exploit the concept of transport as a service: the company has been working for a long time in the field of demand prediction and has carried out various flat rate tests in several US cities over time, trying to guarantee low prices, as illustrated above along the lines of Amazon Prime, or for food delivery, or trying to cover all monthly transportation options in cities like New York.

There’s nothing new about urban monthly transportation passes; Uber’s simply includes other options. Uber, which is steadily extending its presence in more and more cities, the idea of a flat rate that includes everything that, in users’ minds every kind of transportation is new — except that a satirical article was published about four years ago that hypothesized about the possibility of the company entering every markets, including funerals.

Creating services under an umbrella or a common thread with the idea of including them in a lot is a relatively common strategy. In the case of Uber, the taxi service it started out with, to the transport of practically anything, from Uber Freight, to home food deliveries. A while back, the company was interested in buying Europe’s leader in the sector, Deliveroo, but which stalled due to differences over price. That said, the company’s two strategies are the same: paying uncontracted workers a pittance under the guise of them being self-employed, a scheme Spain’s tax office has challenged. At some point in the future, these companies hope to replace couriers and drivers with delivery robots or self-driving vehicles, which would make their operations much more profitable. In the meantime, they will continue to look for legal loopholes and continue exploiting their workforces.

Is Uber’s strategy of consolidating a range of transport options as a single service the future of logistics and transportation? Will the transportation of the future, whether of people, goods or otherwise, be in the hands of large companies using increasingly automated logistics, operating as platforms and capable of adapting their rates based on demand predictions? How many other players will follow suit, bearing in mind that we’re not just talking about Uber, Didi and the like, but that Google’s Waymo and a number of leading car brands have similar plans? How long will it be before we see transportation as a service really hit the road?

(En espa?ol, aquí)

?