Uber, the increasingly ubiquitous ‘push a button, get a ride’ company, is expanding its UberX service into iconic Silicon Valley. The first passenger — Uber pronounced him “Rider Zero” — was Aaron Levie, CEO of the Los Altos cloud-storage firm Box. Levine rode to a lunch meeting.
Now, if “Uber” and “UberX” elide in your mind, you’re not alone. And Uber’s marketing materials don’t help much. On the company’s website, UberX is defined as “the convenience of Uber at a lower price with mid-range cars in a variety of colors.” The key phrase in that description is “mid-range cars.” (Picture your brother’s forest green Honda Civic.) Über Uber, if you will, focuses on fancy cars and, in the words of Uber’s charismatic CEO Travis Kalanick, a hunger to travel the city in “baller” style.
More>>