Car-sharing startup Uber on Friday bragged it rang in the new year with 2 million rides, many of them apparently to revelers heading home in early morning hours.
While demand for rides spiked from 1am to 2am in most cities where Uber operates, partygoers in Paris did not put pressure on the service until after 4am.
The Uber smartphone application was downloaded more than 20,000 times after midnight on New Year’s Eve, the company added.
Use of Uber through the night hit a peak of 58 rides reaching their destinations a second, according to the San Francisco-based startup.
Last month, Uber scrambled to allay fears that executives at the hot car-sharing startup were gunning for journalists and spying on riders.
The controversy widened when a BuzzFeed report indicated that executives at Uber had taken liberties with access to a “God View” that showed where riders and their drivers were located at any given time.
The firm, which lets customers order and pay for taxis or private vehicles via smartphones, has been unofficially valued in the range of between US$25 billion and US$30 billion based on funding rounds.
Its smartphone app connects users with local drivers and the company charges a commission for each ride.
Founded in 2009, Uber is now present in more than 200 cities and in 45 countries.
The company’s rapid expansion has caused tensions with traditional taxi drivers, especially in Europe.
On Tuesday, Uber suspended its amateur driver service in Spain after it received confirmation of a court ruling to ban it in the country. France outlawed the UberPOP service starting from Thursday, and it has also been banned in the Netherlands.
“We’ve temporarily suspended UberPOP in Spain while we appeal the ruling and study new options to allow Spanish people access to safe and comfortable journeys,” Carlos Lloret, the head of Uber in Spain, wrote in a blog post.
Uber was working with Spanish politicians to develop new regulations, he added, underlining that the company “respects the law.”
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