Estonian on-demand transport company Taxify has this weekend began operations in its fourth South African city, Port Elizabeth. Its service has previously been available in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, alongside 25 other cities in 20 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Its latest expansion ensures that it joins Uber in the Eastern Cape city. But Taxify operations manager Linda Mahloko assured potential drivers that working for the company may be more lucrative than with other on-demand services. "Drivers can expect to earn at least 14% more when driving with Taxify compared to competitors," Mahloko said in a press release. "Taxify achieves...
Uber has been in the news a fair bit recently, from protests involving metered taxis to UberEATS finally launched in Durban. But the company's latest set of tweaks is aimed at improving operations for drivers. It today announced a number of features heading to the Uber Driver app, which the company claims will "make it even easier for driver-partners across South Africa to choose when, where, and how they drive". "Over the last few months, we’ve spent a lot of time listening to and engaging with over 12 000 driver-partners across South Africa, hearing what they care about when using the...
UberEATS is now available in Durban, the company announced Friday. After launching in Johannesburg last year November, and stretching to Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Pretoria this year, the food delivery service is now available for those on South Africa's east coast. "UberEATS will be officially launched at the Botanical Gardens in Durban and from today, foodies from Durban North to Umhlanga and Ballito will now be able to indulge in their favourite food from over 70 restaurants by ordering through the UberEATS app," the company noted in a press release. The service currently delivers "across 1422 square kilometers, to over 35,000 unique...
Traffic along Gauteng's R24 route was brought to a standstill this morning, after metered taxi drivers parked their cars on the road in protest. The R24 and R21 are two of Johannesburg and the East Rand's most important routes, linking key Johannesburg suburbs with OR Tambo International Airport. This morning from as early as 6am however, the roads were barely accessible. #TaxiProtest and #HighwayProtest began trending on Twitter across Gauteng Friday morning, as users tweeted pictures of the blockage, and information channels reported on the incident. According to police, two Uber cars were also set alight. This also comes after a spike in...
Tech companies very rarely remain in their niche. Over time, we've seen Google become a hardware company, Microsoft transform into a creator of Android apps, and now Uber is introducing a credit card. Yes, that's right. Uber, the on-demand transportation company, is introducing a credit card. Powered by Barclays and Visa, the Uber Card will operate similarly to other credit cards. Only available in the US for now, users can sign up via the app. According to TechCrunch, the card will be available to use immediately on Uber services once credit worthiness is approved, and a physical card will be issued at...
Cape Town, along with 11 other major world cities, has vowed to shirk purchasing fossil fuel-powered buses in favour of electric models for its inner city transport networks by 2025. The cities, which include Auckland, Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Quito, Vancouver, Mexico City, Milan and Seattle, signed the agreement which is an extension of the already established C40 Clean Bus Declaration Act. C40 cities, of which Cape Town is a member, is an initiative that aims to reduce harmful emissions in city centres and promote green practices. The agreement also ensures that "major areas of the city" will be declared...
In February this year, Uber was rocked with a sexual harassment scandal that resulted in the eventual resignation of founder Travis Kalanick as CEO -- and soon we'll see it play out in theatres. Susan J Fowler, the ex-Uber engineer who detailed her tumultuous tenure at the company in a blog post, is teaming up with production company Good Universe (The Disaster Artist, Bad Neighbours) and Hidden Figures screenwriter Allison Schroeder to bring the story to screen, Deadline reports. The film was pitched with the title Disruptors, and Deadline describes it as a mix between of Erin Brockovich and The Social Network. Sexual harassment is currently a major talking point in Hollywood, as producers and directors...
The war between metered taxi drivers and Uber operators shows no signs of abating any time soon. And the latest incident has left a customer bloodied. South African recording artist Jack Parow took to Twitter early Monday, stating that his friend, Dirk Agenbag, was stabbed while waiting for an Uber in Johannesburg. "Ysterday my chom @DirkAgenbag ordered an @Uber_RSA, whle waiting, a taxi driver stabbed him! Wht does uber do?Tells him to get out the uber! (sic)" he tweeted. Ysterday my chom @DirkAgenbag ordered an @Uber_RSA, whle waiting, a taxi driver stabbed him! Wht does uber do?Tells him to get out the...
UberEATS has officially been in South Africa for a year, and, to celebrate, the company has revealed some weird statistics that will both affirm and mar your faith in humanity. For instance: the smallest UberEATS order this year was a single Dolce Kiss, which costs R4.50. One poor soul wanted a chocolate truffle so badly, they thought it worth the service delivery fee of R20, the extra bank charges, and a 33-minute wait, which UberEATs says is its average delivery time. One order probably took longer, though, and that was the delivery service's biggest meal of the year: 39 cheeseburgers, 16 fried chicken burgers, 21 Cokes, 22 Creme Sodas,...
In March 2014, a Boeing 777 designated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 went missing after taking off in Kuala Lumpur. It was due to land in Beijing, China, but never made it. Now, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) -- one of three parties leading the search -- has today issued its final report on the tragedy. The report didn't speculate on what could've happened to the plane, but did shed light on the details of the search for the aircraft. Alongside the Malaysian and Chinese governments, the ATSB covered an area of 710 000 square kilometres beneath the sea, and a further...
Elon Musk may be nuts, but a remarkable number of the South African-born businessman's ventures have been successful. This week at the International Astronautical Congress in Australia, he announced another "really special" proposal. His space exploration company SpaceX is pondering a new method of transporting people from one corner of the Earth to the other. And it involves a space vehicle/rocket system called the BFR. "The BFR will be capable of taking people from any city to any other city on Earth in under one hour," the company revealed. Elon Musk's SpaceX believes a journey from Johannesburg to Sydney could last just...
Uber today celebrates its fourth anniversary in Africa. Our sister site Ventureburn first revealed the company's plans for an African expansion in July 2013. Uber then began secret tests in August later that year. Now, the company operates in 16 cities across the continent. In honour of the occasion, the on-demand transport company dug up some of the numbers behind its four year stint on the continent. Some of the figures are rather remarkable. The company has moved over 1.8-million people within the four years, with more than 230 000 rides scheduled. It also created more than 29 000 economic opportunities within...
After it was abruptly shooed out of London last week, Uber wants to show the world that it's more than just a disruptive on-demand transport company. The firm today launched Uber Movement, a platform that collates the company's wealth of trip data to benefit urban planners and city leaders. "Uber Movement shows data from the billions of trips that riders have taken with Uber, aggregated into zones covering the standard boundaries used by urban planners, for example Census Tracts and Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs)," the company explains in a press release. "This will enable them to more effectively evaluate where investments in...
Update: Taxify has responded to our request for comment, and issued the following statement. It told Memeburn that it takes these incidents "very seriously". "Safety of both our riders and driver-partners is our priority. Our team has contacted both parties involved in the incident. Unfortunately, it is a complicated word against word situation as the driver's part of the story is very different." The company also revealed the driver's side of the argument: Rider requested a ride, inserted Braamfontein as a destination in the app (this is not a specific address and Taxify team can confirm it was so from the system). They...
Three cars were torched in Sandton Thursday evening in a suspected protest between metered taxi drivers and Uber. According to provincial spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo, preliminary investigations showed two of the cars belonged to Uber, and the third was a metered taxi. No one was harmed. Images and videos of the incident poured onto Twitter as #Uber hit top trending spot nationally. .@TimesLIVE richest square km in Africa (Sandton) is burning as metered and uber drivers set each others vehicles alight pic.twitter.com/GtpJw9FKSV — Graeme Hosken (@GraemeHosken) September 7, 2017 Sitting in Sandton watching the chaos.Getting ugly. #uber drivers fighting back.chased away all metre taxi drivers from...
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