Daimler - the owner of Mercedes Benz - has acquired a raft of taxi app companies in recent years in the belief that driverless travel will come to dominate a quarter of the market within the next 10 years. It purchased My Taxi in 2014.

Daimler spent over €7bn on research and development last year, with the company one of many automakers to have entered the taxi market in recent years. General Motors has invested more than €450m in US group Lyft, while Volkswagen has taken a stake of around €280m in the Israeli-made Gett.

My Taxi says nearly all of its 10,000 Irish drivers have migrated over to the new service from Hailo already. Around half of the 850,000 registered Hailo users have so far signed up to the new service. My Taxi said it will intensify its customer conversion push over the coming weeks.

My Taxi's chief marketing officer Gary Bramall told the Irish Independent that the company was looking at innovative new ways to make drivers' lives easier in the near term.

"Drivers have got specific overheads such as petrol, car and insurance-all of these things. What we are looking at the moment is to build packages that provide better deals on those costs," Bramall said.

A specialist in disruptive technology, Bramall - who previously worked at Apple, Skype and Microsoft - believes the amount of data the company has at its disposal will allow it to offer a "surgically" tailored service to its customers and drivers.

In a thinly-veiled swipe at its main competitor Lynk, Bramall said that it went against the company's ethos to charge drivers a fixed price to use the service. "You shouldn't have to pay €200 or €300 a month to use a bit of technology. We believe if drivers don't work then we don't get any money. Our model is more flexible," Bramall added.

While Hailo has been the dominant force in the Irish market since it was launched in Ireland back in 2012, the company has come up against a formidable rival in recent years in the form of Lynk.

Founded in 2015, Lynk is led by Noel Ebbs, a veteran of the taxi business who has acquired a sizeable number of cab firms in recent years that now operate under the Lynk umbrella. His firm has gone from strength-to-strength in the past two years, with a major expansion in the UK and the US following a successful €25m funding round.
The two companies are the undisputed market leaders in the book-a-ride space in Ireland, operating a much larger market share than the globally-vaunted Uber.

Bramall admits the decision to rebrand such a well-known app was a difficult decision.
"Hailo had become a verb here in Ireland. So it was the biggest challenge we had from a rebrand perspective," he said.

"So it wasn't an easy decision, but we are now part of a bigger play. When you look at the footprint now, you can see that we can scale much quicker and we have a lot more resources to be able to do things and to win the hearts and minds of drivers and customers," he said.

The rebranding from Hailo to My Taxi began last month and follows the merger of the two firms which was overseen by Daimler. As part of the deal, Daimler is to invest hundreds of millions of euro across Europe as the merged company bids to compete in an increasingly fast-paced market.
While the future of the taxi business remains unclear, My Taxi is forging ahead with plans for the present.

Next on the agenda is to get the remaining 400,000 or so Irish Hailo customers to use the new app. While short-term solutions for drivers are likely to be welcomed, the inexorable rise of technology makes the future a lot more uncertain.

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READING

THE TOWN'S taxi drivers came out in full force on Tuesday to protest the closure of a key station rank.

Hundreds of placard waving drivers lined the entrance to the Reading Borough Council officers to deliver a petition to the strategic environment, planning and transport committee.

Their anger arose following a traffic-management sub-committee meeting in November, when councillors approved plans to remove the Horseshoe Rank at the south side of the station and the Garrard Street link that feeds into it.

Mizra Beg is one of many drivers who believes the council are not doing enough to protect Reading's taxi trade.

He said: “They have closed Garrard Street and the Horse Shoe rank. The Horse Shoe rank was the main rank for the station. They have taken away all the main ranks now.

“Reading is supposed to be an integrated transport system, but unfortunately it's not.

“We know the council owns the busses but to the Trade it seems like there is either a conflict of interest, mismanagement or an abuse of power.”

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SOUTH OXHEY

A group of taxi drivers fear for their livelihoods as developers prepare to build on their taxi rank.

As part of the South Oxhey Initiative, a regeneration scheme by Three Rivers District Council and Countryside Properties, a taxi rank in Station Approach will be reduced from eight bays to four.

But Eddie Steel, who has been a taxi driver for 36 years, says he and other drivers fear this could impact their business.

The 70-year-old said: “The people of South Oxhey need this taxi rank and so do we – there’s always a stream of people queuing at it.

“This project is all about corporate greed. So many people’s lifelong businesses are being destroyed by the development; they’re just being shoved out. But the council and developers don’t care.

“Most people on the estate never wanted the development in the first place; most would have been happy with the shop fronts being re-done. But instead, they’re kicking people out their homes – they might be offering them a new house, but people have lived here for years; these are their homes.”

Work on the £150m regeneration scheme started in December. Over the next five years, the South Oxhey estate will be demolished to make way for 514 new homes, a supermarket and retail space.

Current businesses have been forced out of their properties and residents have been moved to nearby satellite sites.

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