Flywheel
It has come to this. In San Francisco, where Uber was born, the city’s self-described oldest and largest taxi company is renaming itself after a competing app. On Wednesday, Desoto Cab said it was rebranding—and repainting—its fleet of 300 cars as Flywheel Taxis.
As if you needed any more evidence that smartphones are changing the way things work, move, and even look in the real world.
Of course, Uber itself is Exhibit A for the ways ubiquitous mobile computing (and a strong appetite for conflict) can unsettle local economies. Uber is a pure function of smartphone technology—no mobile device, no app, no Uber. But there is an Uber, much to the dismay of companies like Desoto, which previously dominated the taxi trade. To catch up with the new app-defined reality of their industry, cab companies have joined forces with startups like Flywheel, which works specifically with licensed taxi drivers.
Spreading a new logo in the streets won’t make much difference, however, unless the company it represents can offer something different and better.
But playing catch-up is hard when the competition keeps racing ahead. While taxi companies were still trying to move beyond a business model that still largely depended on customers sticking out their hands on street corners, Uber was gathering billions of dollars in financing in a bid to become the 21st century’s definitive way to get around. In the process, Uber has become synonymous with the service it provides (“You don’t have to pick me up, I’ll just get an Uber”). Along with its technological might, Uber has a brand advantage that seems nearly impossible to surmount.
Still, if you’re going to try, you have to start somewhere. I don’t check which company’s cab I’m hailing from the curb. I get in whichever car stops. But as apps take the place of arm-waving, I need to know an app exists before I know to use it. Yes, Uber rose to prominence on word-of-mouth. But its success has crowded out rivals. Flywheel was founded the same year as Uber, but it has nowhere near the name recognition, nor the funding. Plastering the app’s name on the sides of the cars it summons raises the profile of Flywheel, which in turn helps Desoto, since that’s the app to which it’s decided to hitch its future.
More Than A Logo
Spreading a new logo in the streets won’t make much difference, however, unless the company it represents can offer something different and better. Flywheel and the traditional cab companies it works with have tried to sell themselves as a legit alternative to Uber’s pervasive defiance of regulators. But the moral high ground will always be a niche market. Meanwhile, despite the scandals that have tarnished its image, Uber is reportedly forecasting $2 billion in revenue this year, a figure all the more stunning because it apparently represents money the company keeps after paying out drivers.
Flywheel also says it will never enact surge pricing, Uber’s much-loathed practice of raising fare rates at times of peak demand. Uber says surge pricing is necessary to get more drivers out on the road. Better to charge more, the company believes, than leave passengers stranded. But higher prices also seem designed to drive demand down.
Predictable pricing is a nice promise, but even more important is a predictable ride. Fairly or not, San Francisco’s taxis have long had a reputation for not being available when needed, an image problem Uber has exploited since its early days. And popularity creates its own virtuous cycle: the more demand for rides on one app, the more drivers will want to drive for that platform—more supply to meet demand.
A spokeswoman for Flywheel says that San Francisco has plenty of cabs to go around, and that its drivers have the advantage as licensed taxis of being able to stop for hails from the street as well as the app. But if cab drivers want a real ranges of choices in how they find their fares, they have another option, too: they can always log into Uber.
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