FREE NOW Q&A: Taxi industry recovery, Kapten merger and future plans
The last 12 months has heralded change in every aspect of life and work. There has been no exception to this for FREE NOW who have seen a number of changes as they merged private hire app Kapten together with their taxi app, introduced a new green vehicle pledge, and there have even been reports of an Uber buy out.
TaxiPoint caught up with Mariusz Zabrocki, UK General Manager at FREE NOW, to discuss these points openly and talk about the industry’s recovery as we begin to travel the Government’s Roadmap out of lockdown and many look forward to more positive changes to come.
How do you expect the taxi and private hire industry to recover once all COVID-19 measures have been dropped? Do you see a fast recovery in work levels or a slow improvement?
“I expect mobility levels to gradually increase with every step of the relaxation of the COVID-19 measures. There won’t be a sudden jump overnight. Even if all restrictions are lifted, there is also a question of changes in people’s habits, in work policies or a population drop in city centres, especially in London. Moreover, restrictions on international travel may remain for much longer than the local restrictions, which will impact airport trips and demand from tourists. Therefore, I expect overall mobility in the UK cities to be lower for a couple of years.
“On the positive side from the perspective of the taxi and PHV industry, I expect people to move away from buses, tube and rail and increasingly choose more personal ways of transport, apart from taxi and PHV, that would be bikes and e-scooters for example.
“On balance, I expect the industry to come back to pre-Covid levels by the end of the year, with taxis recovering stronger than PHV due to additional personal space and perceived safety. Over the past year on the FREE NOW platform, taxi has been recovering much stronger than PHV when lockdowns were lifted and its share in our business has increased substantially.”
Since Kapten joined the FREE NOW platform what has been the feedback from drivers and passengers?
“Ahead of the merger, there were some black cab drivers who were very vocal publicly in their criticism. We were optimistic and expected taxi drivers to benefit from increased demand as a result of combined apps and marketing budgets. Drivers who we talked to privately were displaying a ‘let’s wait and see’ attitude.
“You are asking what was the feedback since then. People’s actions are more reliable than words. We’ve seen a continuous increase in taxi drivers since the merger. We’re especially popular among LEVC and Nissan Dynamo drivers due to the benefits we offer to EV drivers, such as on-car advertising, priority allocation and extra rides from EV requests. More than 80% of London EV taxi drivers are registered on the
platform. What’s more, taxi driver engagement is at an all-time high, so things are looking really good on the taxi side.
“On the other hand, PHV drivers were the ones that changed platform, had to adapt to a new app, new features, and not everything worked the way it should at the beginning. For example, some key features that PHV drivers were used to were added only some time after the merger, such as Waze navigation. As a result, driver satisfaction dropped visibly during the first months after the merger. It has now recovered to pre- merger territory, but we will continue our work to improve the app.
“In some ways, we are finding similar themes on the passenger side. Existing taxi customers haven’t experienced any major changes, they continue using black cabs as much as before the merger (adjusting for mobility levels) and their satisfaction has remained high. We have also seen an increase in passengers that
had not used black cabs previously, trying them out and seeing the benefits, so overall the taxi passenger base increased.
“PHV customers, the same as drivers, had to switch to a new app, with different features, and initially didn’t see some of the features they were used to. The result was also similar: an initial drop in satisfaction, but now PHV customer satisfaction is high again and is on a very positive trend.”
How can the licensed taxi industry and the private hire industry compete against each other on the same platform?
“We see the two services as complementary to each other. We know there is high consumer demand for both and sometimes a black cab is favourable for a journey, for example, in the city centre or with bigger groups, while they might prefer a PHV for a night out. Our ambition at FREE NOW is to offer more choice to passengers and enable them to decide which vehicle type is best for them. We want our customers to have a better choice of ride-hailing app and one that is fairer, greener and pays taxes locally.”
What new developments can we expect from FREE NOW in 2021? Are there plans to include other modes of transport on the FREE NOW platform?
“Our Green Pledge is the big new development in 2021. We will continue to focus on making the fleet greener and greener. More than 60% of taxi rides are already in EV vehicles and almost 20% on the PHV side. We’re about to start communication to the drivers of older taxis and PHVs, so that they know how they can switch to EVs and how FREE NOW can support them both financially and non-financially.
“In the future we are looking to include other modes of transport on the app, such as e- scooters when they are available in London, but taxi and PHV will remain at our core.”
It has been reported that ride-hailing firm Uber were in talks to buy FREE NOW. Are these discussions ongoing and how might an acquisition like this impact the UK taxi and private hire market?
“We cannot comment on our shareholders’ activities or stories of this nature. Our priority is to continue working with drivers to ensure that we can support them in helping the country get moving again post lockdown.”
