A Beijing cabbie’s take on the taxi app revolution

Taxi and ridesharing apps have exploded in China over the past few years. But whether they’ve actually improved things depends on who you ask. Chinese regulators continue to oppose the new apps, but consumers have embraced them wholeheartedly.

How do the drivers themselves feel? A Techweb editor hopped into a cab he hailed using Didi Dache to find out. What follows is our translation of his interview. (Note: the driver pictured above is not the person who was interviewed).

Cabbie: Apps like Didi, 51yongche, and Yidao have really made things tough for drivers. In the past, these roadsides were full of people looking for cabs, but now look, there’s no one. There’s no work here because they’ve all hailed [private] cars. Before in Zhongguancun and Guomao [two busy commercial areas of Beijing] there were plenty of people who couldn’t get cabs, and now there are none. Everyone who takes cabs knows that driving a cab is getting harder and harder.

Editor: But you can also hail cabs [rather than private cars] using these apps, that’s how I got into your cab just now. And didn’t you make a lot last year with the subsidy [from Didi Dache]?

Cabbie: We did, but that was just a few months. Now with these private car [apps] how can we make any money? Didi made us wealthy for a moment and then destroyed us for a generation. Didi used us to get famous, and now it’s crushing us to make more money itself.

Editor: So you’re spending more time with an empty cab?

Cabbie: Just having a body in the cab isn’t useful in and of itself. There are tons of fares going from their apartment building to the subway station but what’s the point of that? You’d have to take ten of them to earn RMB 100 [US$16], you can’t make money that way. If I go from here to Jinrong street that’s RMB 20, but if the road’s congested for half an hour, it’s not worth it. It’s only on longer trips where you can earn real money, like at night from Zhongguancun to Yizhuang, I could earn RMB 100 in half an hour. But now there just aren’t any fares like that.

You know what kind of person I like driving? Rich bosses, because they aren’t short on cash. 100 or 200 RMB per trip. But now they all hail BMWs and Benzes via apps so they can have face and be more comfortable, since spending a little more doesn’t bother them.

Editor: There are no long-trip fares among the ones Didi recommends to you?

Cabbie: There are too many taxi [and ridesharing] apps now […] and there aren’t enough people using Didi for taxis. In the past there would be 50 new fares on Didi every minute, now it’s just ten, or on some days just five. And with so many cars, [the good fares] are harder and harder to get.

Editor: The private-car drivers also complain they’re not making enough money.