Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

by Mike Isaac

Taxi drivers who didn’t give in to despair, however, fought back. Some tried to beat Uber at its own game by forming taxi alliances and creating their own apps like iRide, Arro, Curb, and others. But taxi operators soon found the best way to fight back wasn’t to compete with an app. It was to protect the turf they already had. When Uber launched in a new city, taxi operators would often lean on their local transit agencies and taxi authorities, who would dispatch an official to Uber’s local headquarters. Armed with a thick rulebook and a scowl, officials in New York, Nevada, Oregon, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and other states would point out the rules and laws the company was breaking. The “Weights and Measures” book was supposed to tabulate the cost of a ride, they would say, not some complicated algorithm inside the Uber app. When that didn’t work, local legislators were known to dispatch city and state agencies to shut Uber down. If none of these things worked, there was always good old-fashioned skull cracking. Taxi cartels in areas like Las Vegas and elsewhere had deep ties to organized crime, which meant serious and sometimes violent retaliation. Cars were stolen. Sometimes taxi owners would assault drivers and set their cars aflame. In Italy, Benedetta Lucini faced pushback from local taxi thugs. As general manager of Uber’s Milan office, she worked overtime to convince Uber drivers to stay on the road, even as taxi operators would hail Ubers to their location, pull dr...