US ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc yesterday said it does not plan to exit the Taiwanese market yet, despite looming fines.
Uber’s comments came as the San Francisco-based company is facing up to NT$25 million (US$775,194) in fines after the legislature passed an amendment to the Highway Act (公路法) earlier this month, significantly increasing fines on illegal taxi service operators by about 166 times.
Uber’s local unit could be forced to shut down after President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) signs the amendment into law.
Photo: Lin Cheng-kung, Taipei Times
“The company considers Taiwan an important market,” Uber Taiwan general manager Gu Li-kai (顧立楷) said. “We hope to stay and to grow our business here. We hold a relatively optimistic view about this.”
Gu made the remarks on the sidelines of a news conference for the launch of a campaign in Taipei, “StandByU-Uber stays,” calling on consumers and drivers to support the ride-sharing service.
“We will continue to communicate with government agencies to look for any possibility of relaxing the rules… We hope to reach a consensus with the government as soon as possible,” Gu said.
The campaign is the latest effort by Uber to curry favor with the public as the company’s talks with the government have stalled.
“Uber is concerned about the heavy penalties and about their impact on freelance drivers,” Gu said.
It is unsuitable to apply existing public transportation rules, which have been in place for three or four decades, to regulate the six-year-old car-sharing industry, Gu said.
Uber offers an app-based ride-sharing service, which is very different from companies in the traditional transportation industry, he said.
The company is exploring better solutions in Taiwan and in other countries to adjust outdated rules and to make it possible for the ride-sharing industry, or the whole sharing-economy to develop, he said.
India unveiled a more liberal taxi policy to allow Uber and its Indian rival, Ola, to offer app-based ride-sharing services in the country, Gu said.
The Uber Taiwan app has been downloaded about 1 million times and the firm has recruited about 10,000 drivers since it entered the market in 2013.
Gu said the company is willing to pay e-commerce operator taxes, that mean Google Play, Uber and Apple Store pay 5 percent business tax.
Uber in talks with more than 10 insurers, including Fubon Insurance Co (富邦產險), to offer insurance solutions for its drivers, Gu said.
However, insurers are conservative about collaborating with Uber due to the government’s ambiguous stance over its ride-sharing service, Gu said.
Cairo’s new monorail slices across the city skyline, running above the familiar chaos of blaring horns and aging buses’ exhaust fumes that mark rush hour below. The US$4.5 billion monorail, opened this month, is among Egypt’s most prominent new transport projects, part of a debt-funded infrastructure drive criticized for sapping state finances while bringing limited benefits to most of the country’s 109 million people. “It feels like you’re in a different country,” said Ramy Sayed, a restaurant manager, aboard a driverless Innovia 300 train. “No noise, no traffic, we’re not used to this.” The eastern line runs 56km from the bustling middle-class
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS