How the Anti-Uber Backlash is Spreading Around the World

As reported by the Washington Post: There's no doubt that Uber, a car-sharing service launched in San Francisco in 2009, is a booming business. With billions in estimated revenues it's now set up in more than 200 cities in 51 countries.

It's equally sure, however, that the company has had its share of domestic controversies, from accusations of sabotage against competitors to suggestions that they would threaten journalists. Internationally, when dealing with different laws and cultures, the potential for new controversies is likely even higher.

It's worth pointing out, of course, that Uber has often been made welcome in countries, and sometimes is viewed as a positive force (in Saudi Arabia some see it as helping women, barred from driving, become more independent). The company has also shown a remarkable willingness to engage in lengthy legal and publicity battles to win over courts and the public.

But can any one company win so many battles? Below, we've listed some of the controversies the American company has found itself in around the world.

Australia
Uber says it operates out of a number of cities in Australia, including Sydney and Melbourne, though a number of states impose fines on "unauthorized" drivers and those without insurance. In particular, it has faced an organized backlash from taxi firms in Queensland, who have publicly warned of safety issues with Uber drivers.

"The government has told these companies not to operate but they are ignoring this," Taxi Council of Queensland Benjamin Wash said recently. "Queensland taxi drivers undergo daily criminal checks, but ride-share drivers don't. You simply don't know who is behind the wheel."

Belgium

The capital Brussels, already known for its complicated taxi laws, banned Uber in April, and threatened drivers with a $12,000 (€10,000) fine.

However, Uber has disputed the ruling and continued to operate. "Brussels is one of our fastest-growing European cities," Filip Nuytemans, Uber's operations manager in the Brussels, told Bloomberg in October. Local authorities are now said to be working on legislation that may allow Uber to operate.

Britain
In London, Uber has faced down one of the world's most entrenched (and expensive) taxi systems. It's led to protests from the iconic "black cab" drivers, who brought traffic to a standstill this summer and demanded Uber be further regulated. There have also been reports that black cab companies have been paying detectives to pose as Uber customers to gather evidence for an upcoming court case.

Canada
Uber has recently been expanding its UberX service (which connects riders with drivers in regular cars) in certain Canadian cities, which has prompted a backlash. Montreal's mayor has told reporters that UberX is illegal, and the city of Toronto has tried to shut the entire Uber's services down,

France
On Dec. 12, Uber is expected to find out if its Uberpop service (similar to UberX but riders share cars) will be banned in France. The company also suffered a backlash after the Lyon office ran a promotion that paired riders with "hot chick" drivers.

Germany
Taxi drivers in Germany have been particular vocal in their opposition to Uber, with one legal challenge from Taxi Deutschland calling the ride-sharing app a "form of locust share-economy" that was taking part in "anarchy capitalism."

The company has since faced legal problems, most notably a nationwide cease and desist order given out by a Frankfurt court in August that threatened a fine of up to $300,000 per ride for drivers. That decision was later overturned.

The Netherlands
On Monday, the Trade and Industry Appeals Tribunal in The Hague ordered Uber to stop its UberPop service claiming it broke rules that drivers must be licensed. "This is only the first step in a long-running legal battle," Uber said in a statement in response to the ruling.

India
Almost certainly the most worrying problem listed here, Uber was banned in New Delhi this week after a driver was accused of raping a passenger and arrested. Police also called in Uber executives and accused the service of failing to properly check the driver's background, though the service will continue in five other Indian cities.

Here, Uber has found itself at the center of a larger problem: India has had a number of high-profile sexual assaults in recent years, sometimes involving attacks on public transport. As Rama Lakshmi writes for WorldViews, before the alleged attack the service had been viewed as a good thing for women, allowing them independence and safety late at night.

The incident in New Delhi was only the latest problem for the group in India: The country's stricter requirements for credit card transactions also put it in conflict with the ride-sharing app.

Japan 
In Tokyo, Uber faces a less worrying problem: What Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has described as “very byzantine and complicated regulations." These regulations forced Uber to register as a "travel agency" and work with existing companies. The company also faces competition from a number of other ride-sharing apps.

Philippines
Uber has faced repeated criticism from authorities in the Philippines, including sting-operations designed to catch drivers operating without commercial licenses. The government has recently been working with Uber executives to create new legislation, however.

Russia
While regulations in Russia are comparatively simple when compared to other countries, Moscow already has a culture of unlicensed taxis that makes Uber's expansion there difficult. Muscovites can often just hail one by standing on the street corner, or via a number of apps that have existed for years before Uber arrived.

South Korea
The Seoul city government has repeatedly said that Uber's services violate its laws, and recently threatened to fine or even jail drivers using non-properly licensed vehicles. "Those without a taxi license cannot offer rides in return for money," Seoul Metropolitan Government's Choi Eul-ko said last week according to the Korea Times. "If they do, they will be in big trouble.”

Spain
In October, the city of Madrid announced plans to fine unlicensed Uber drivers and the government of Catalan recently announced its hopes to impound Uber cars. On Tuesday, a court in Madrid announced a preliminary nationwide ban on Uber.

Taiwan
Taipai's taxi drivers staged protests about Uber over the summer, and the Taiwanese government plans to pull the app from local stores as it does not meet the country's legislation, the China Post reported recently.

Thailand

In November, Uber was declared illegal by the Thai government. In particular, the government objected to the credit card only technology used by Uber.

USA
The City of Portland Oregon announced a law suit against Uber, and has asked the Court to stop the 'illegal' service.  Uber service has been suspended in Nevada by a State judge.  In New York, taxis and limousine operators will likely get an Uber-like application from Kallos to help them compete against online ride providers like Uber and Lyft.

Heathrow Plane in Near-miss With Drone

As reported by BBC News: An Airbus A320 pilot reported seeing a helicopter-style drone as the jet was 700 feet off the ground on its approach to the runway at 1416 GMT on 22 July.

The CAA has not identified the airline or how close the drone came to the plane, which can carry 180 people.

It gave the incident an "A" rating, meaning a "serious risk of collision".

This is the highest incident rating the CAA can give.

Investigators were unable to identify the drone, which did not appear on air traffic control radar and disappeared after the encounter.

Crash warning

The CAA said it had to depend on people using their common sense when they operated drones

In May the pilot of an ATR 72 turbo-prop plane reported seeing a helicopter drone only 80 feet away as he approached Southend airport at a height of 1,500 feet.

The incidents have prompted a warning from the British Airline Pilots' Association (Balpa) that the rapid increase in the number of drones operated by amateur enthusiasts now poses "a real risk" to commercial aircraft.

The association's general secretary, Jim McAuslan said drones could cause a repeat of the "Hudson River experience", when a plane was forced to land in water in New York in 2009 after birds were sucked into its engines.

"The risk of a 10 kilogram object hitting a plane is a real one that pilots are very concerned about" he said.

"A small drone could be a risky distraction for a pilot coming into land and cause serious damage if they hit one."

Sales of drones have increased rapidly, with UK sales running at a rate of between 1,000 and 2,000 every month.

They are expected to be very popular as Christmas presents.

They cost as little as £35 for a smaller model - more advanced drones capable of carrying a high definition camera and travelling at 45 miles per hour cost almost £3,000.

Only a very small minority of people operating drones have attended training courses in how to fly them.

'Common sense'

A spokesman for the CAA said it had to depend on people using their common sense when they operated drones.

He said the current level of risk should be "kept in perspective" but warned that breaking laws governing the use of drones could potentially threaten commercial aircraft.

"People using unmanned aircraft need to think, use common sense and take responsibility for them", he said.

"There are rules which have the force of law and have to be followed."

Drones may not be flown higher than 400 feet or further than 500 meters from the operator, and they must not go within 50 meters of people, vehicles or buildings.

There are exclusion zones around airports and the approaches to them for drones weighing more than seven kilograms.

Mr McAuslan said there was an urgent need for rules to be tightened before much larger unmanned cargo planes - potentially the size of a Boeing 737 - took to the skies.

Blazing The Waze: FDOT Is The Traffic App’s First U.S. Partner

As reported by WLRN: Earlier this year the Florida Department of Transportation entered into a partnership with the traffic data company Waze. The Israeli startup, now owned by Google, lets “Wazers” use a smartphone app to report the location of crashes, congestion, potholes, road kill and police officers among many other things.

The agreement is purely a “data-sharing” partnership. Waze gets access to the stream of information produced by the road sensors FDOT uses to monitor traffic flow on Florida’s major highways. And FDOT gets access to the myriad reports filed by Wazers.

“Even the wealthiest states or cities, they can afford sensors in the roads, but they’re really reserved for the main roads,” says Di-Ann Eisnor, head of growth for Waze.

Instead of in-road sensors, Waze uses a smartphone’s GPS to produce an army of roaming surveyors, perpetually measuring traffic flow and reporting back. By getting a data-dump from Waze every couple of minutes, FDOT will now be able to check in on roads it couldn’t afford to cover with sensors, like US-1, SR 441 and Tamiami Trail, says Russell Allen, who works on FDOT’s Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) team. (For its part, Waze says FDOT’s data immediately increased its quality in Florida by 10 percent.)

Below: A data visualization of all accidents reported on I-95 during the month of November. The scale goes from green (the low end) to red (the high end). Created by Waze.

Waze is now in data-sharing agreements with about 20 public entities, ranging from the city government of Rio De Janeiro to the New York Police Department.

The Florida Department of Transportation was the second partner globally and the first in the United States. Among other things, Rio De Janeiro is using the Waze data to plan routes for its garbage trucks, according to Eisnor and the NYPD is giving Waze the locations of some of its traffic officers as a way to deter speeders before they see the police cars. (The NYPD did not respond to an interview request on the tactic.)

Waze gives credit to Florida’s outgoing Secretary of Transportation, Ananth Prasad, for forging the partnership. In an FDOT press release from May announcing the agreement, Prasad made clear some of his hopes for the program:

“As we saw during the recent heavy flooding in Florida’s panhandle, up-to-date traffic information is vital to letting the public know what roads and bridges are open and closed during a weather emergency. This data sharing is another example of a public-private partnership bringing together infrastructure experts and technical experts that will greatly benefit motorists.”

Di-Ann Eisnor said Waze tested a similar use-case when Hurricane Sandy hit New York City. “We got a call from the White House, who said, 'We have no idea which gas stations are open... We don’t know how long the lines are. ... Is there any way that your users can help us figure out which gas stations are open?”

Waze sent a message to users in the area asking for help. Eisnor said they got about 10,000 responses. “And that’s what FEMA was able to use to figure where to route their fuel trucks.”

When asked about measures taken to protect the privacy of users, Eisnor said: “We don’t even go anywhere near a line that could violate anyone’s privacy.” She specified that Waze doesn’t collect identifiable information, including starting and ending points of Wazer trips.

Russell Allen said FDOT is concerned with real-time, in-the-moment traffic information. “We don’t really do much with patterns, collecting data,” he said.

Below a visualization of a day's worth of traffic in Miami put together by Waze and Google Data Arts team.

Why Elon Musk's Batteries Scare the Hell Out of the Electric Company

As reported by Bloomberg: Here’s why something as basic as a battery both thrills and terrifies the U.S. utility industry.

At a sagebrush-strewn industrial park outside of Reno, Nevada, bulldozers are clearing dirt for Tesla Motors Inc. battery factory, projected to be the world’s largest.

Tesla’s founder, Elon Musk, sees the $5 billion facility as a key step toward making electric cars more affordable, while ending reliance on oil and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At first blush, the push toward more electric cars looks to be positive for utilities struggling with stagnant sales from energy conservation and slow economic growth.

Yet Musk’s so-called gigafactory may soon become an existential threat to the 100-year-old utility business model. The facility will also churn out stationary battery packs that can be paired with rooftop solar panels to store power. Already, a second company led by Musk, SolarCity Corp. (SCTY), is packaging solar panels and batteries to power California homes and companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT)

“The mortal threat that ever cheaper on-site renewables pose” comes from systems that include storage, said Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a Snowmass, Colorado-based energy consultant. “That is an unregulated product you can buy at Home Depot that leaves the old business model with no place to hide.” 

J.B. Straubel, chief technology officer for Palo Alto, California-based Tesla, said the company views utilities as partners not adversaries in its effort to build out battery storage. Musk was not available for comment.

The Tesla systems are arriving just as utilities begin to feel increasing pressure worldwide from the disruption posed by renewable energy.

Lima Meeting

In Germany, the rapid rise of tax-subsidized clean energy has undermined wholesale prices and decimated the profitability of coal and natural gas plants. Germany’s largest utility EON SE (EOAN) said this week it will spin off its fossil-fuel plant business to focus on renewables in part because of new clean energy competitors coming onto its turf.

Threats to the traditional utility model come as energy and environment take the world stage at the latest round of United Nations climate talks that began Dec. 1 in Lima. Delegates, backed by global environmental groups, want to leave the conference with a draft agreement to tackle climate change by lowering carbon-dioxide emissions -- something that has eluded them for years.

The Rocky Mountain Institute’s Lovins has installed solar on his house in Snowmass and uses it to power his electric car. His monthly electric bill: $25. He has a lot of company.

100,000 Plug-ins

In California, where 40 percent of the nation’s plug-in cars have been sold, about half of electric vehicle owners have solar or want to install it, according to a February survey by the Center for Sustainable Energy, a green-energy advocate. More than 100,000 plug-ins have been sold in California, according to data from HybridCars.com and Baum & Associates, though EVs make up less than 1 percent of all U.S. car sales.

Few homes and businesses use solar and back-up-battery storage, proof for some utilities that the systems remain a hard sell outside of states like California or markets like Hawaii where high power costs make solar competitive.

Still, the Edison Electric Institute, a trade group representing America’s investor-owned utilities, recently announced that its members will help to encourage electric vehicle use by spending $50 million annually to buy plug-in service trucks and invest in car-charging technology.

“Advancing plug-in electric vehicles and technologies is an industry priority,” said EEI President Thomas Kuhn.

Charging Stations

Analysts think the industry has been slow to react. Tesla, SolarCity and green-energy companies are already moving aggressively into unoccupied space. “Some of the more nimble companies that think and move more quickly, they are beating the utilities to the punch,” said Ben Kallo, a San Francisco-based analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co.

Tesla has installed 135 solar-powered fast-charging stations across North America where its Model S drivers can refuel for free. NRG Energy Inc. is building a network of public charging stations in major cities that drivers can access on a per-charge basis or for a flat monthly fee of about $15.

And then there’s the home front. In a July report, Morgan Stanley said Tesla’s home and business energy-storage product could be “disruptive” in the U.S. and in Europe as customers seek to avoid utility fees by going “off-grid.”

‘Sufficient Appreciation’

“We believe there is not sufficient appreciation of the magnitude of energy storage cost reduction that Tesla has already achieved, nor of the further cost reduction magnitude that Tesla might be able to achieve once the company has constructed its ‘gigafactory,’” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.

Tesla sees itself taking on a grand mission -- not just to lower emissions from cars and trucks, but to have a societal impact. “If we only do it on the transportation side, we ignore the utility side, and we are probably ignoring half of our responsibility,” said Mateo Jaramillo, director of powertrain business development at Tesla Motors, at the recent Platts California Power and Gas Conference in San Francisco.

Tesla and Oncor Electric Delivery, owner of the largest power-line network in Texas, have discussed a $2 billion investment in stationary battery storage to solve the problem of fluctuating output from wind and solar. Tesla and SolarCity are separate entities and only share management at the board level.

Smart Home

A glimpse of that future can be seen in Davis, California, where Honda Motor Co. has developed a “smart home” that produces more energy than it uses while charging a plug-in car. The home was designed in collaboration with SolarCity, PG&E Corp. and the University of California at Davis to showcase energy-efficient and renewable technologies. It will serve as a home for a member of the UC Davis community and a lab for the study of new businesses and technologies.

SolarCity rival SunPower Corp. is offering its solar and storage systems to buyers of electric cars from Audi AG and rebates for solar-panels to Ford Motor Co. plug-in customers. SunPower also has struck a partnership with homebuilder KB Home to begin installing solar and storage systems in California.

The time when residents can charge their electric cars with excess solar stored in their home batteries is “not decades away, that is years away,” said SunPower CEO Tom Werner.

Holy Grail

Both SolarCity and SunPower say their goal isn’t to move customers completely off-grid, just to reduce their dependence on it. “Grid storage has been the Holy Grail for renewables because the energy is intermittent,” Kallo said. “Finding a way to store that is very powerful.”

For the power companies, the stakes are high.

In June, EEI issued a call to action, saying converting people from gasoline cars to electric vehicles is nearly essential for survival. The report concluded: “The bottom line is that the electric utility industry needs the electrification of the transportation sector to remain viable and sustainable in the long run.”

To that point, executives at some of the nation’s largest utilities from New York to California say they are preparing their grids for more plug-in cars, reaching out to automakers and working with regulators to make sure customers as well as the utilities benefit from the trend.

Natural Partnership

“I read a lot of articles about Elon Musk versus the utility companies,” said John Shipman, who heads electric vehicle programs at New York-based Consolidated Edison Co. “I don’t see it that way at all. There is a natural partnership that can exist there.”

In California, where electric vehicle adoption is the highest in the nation, and Governor Jerry Brown has set a goal of having 1.5 million zero-emission vehicles on the road by 2025, utilities are already in the game.

“The electric grid will be just as important in the years to come because the grid is becoming the platform that makes it possible for people to plug in solar panels, batteries and charging stations,” said Ellen Hayes, a PG&E spokeswoman. “Having a solar panel that isn’t connected to the grid is like having a computer that’s not connected to the Internet.”

Edison International’s Southern California Edison and Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric have proposed investing about $500 million in car charging stations. Along with PG&E, they are backing a proposal that would loosen restrictions on utilities owning charging facilities.

Grid Upgrades

There is yet another side to the argument -- can utilities manage the load?

“Electric vehicles can be the best thing to ever happen to our industry or the worst thing to ever happen to our industry,” said James Avery, a senior vice president at San Diego Gas & Electric.

Avery doesn’t foresee most customers leaving the grid, but does see the risk of an influx of electric cars that overtaxes the network. SDG&E, whose territory has the highest penetration of plug-ins in the U.S., plans to spend as much as $3.2 billion to upgrade its grid. It already offers cheaper rates for EV owners to charge overnight when power demand is lowest.

Southern California Edison is planning to spend about $9.2 billion through 2017 to allow the two-way flow of electricity on its system, said Edison International CEO Ted Craver.

“We are certainly big supporters of electric transportation,” Craver said.

He added: “That electric car isn’t just going to stay at home. It’s going to go other places. It’s going to need to get charged in other places. And I think our ability to provide that glue for all those things that are going to plug into that network is really how we see our core business.”

Shifting Landscape

Some utilities are more amendable to the shifting landscape than others. Last year, Pinnacle West Capital Corp.’s Arizona Public Service raised the ire of its customers and the solar industry by tacking on a monthly fee of about $5 for residents with solar systems. Adding fixed connection charges or additional fees to such customers may cause more of them to defect, said Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

“Utilities should look at Elon as a brilliant entrepreneur and innovator who is helping create the new electricity industry and betting against him hasn’t worked so well,” Lovins said. “I would look at ways to benefit from what he is bringing to the market.”