All hail the iCab as apps rule the roads

The latest cab app was launched last week. Called Kabbee, it has a fleet of more than 4,000 licensed minicabs on its books. The service doesn’t recruit individual drivers, but rather partners with selected, vetted minicab companies in the London area. To use its free iPhone app (Android and BlackBerry versions are planned), users first have to create an account online at kabbee.com. They then link a credit card to that account or load it with money.

The app uses the iPhone’s location technology to pinpoint where you are and lets you add extra details, such as what you’re wearing, to help the cab driver identify you. Type in your destination and Kabbee sends you quotes from cab companies willing to tackle the route. After choosing a firm — presumably the one providing the most competitive quote — you receive a text and an email to tell you the booking number as well as the make, model and registration of the car.

Drivers of traditional black cabs are not ignoring this revolution. The free LDNtaxiApp went into the iPhone App Store this summer. It has signed up 350 cabbies so far — although with around 20,000 working in London, it clearly has a long way to go. Like Kabbee, it requires you to register your details and upload a photo of yourself. It also uses your phone’s location features to identify where you are.

There is a generation that no longer thinks the car is a must-have but the iPhone is a must-have To call a cab, you simply specify a destination and press the “Hail a taxi” button, and your details go out to any driver running the app within a one-mile radius. The first to respond gets your custom. The app sends you a picture of the cab driver, and one of you to him.

It is true that the idea of using your phone to call a cab is not new, but the additional details about the driver and the journey that users of these apps can gain makes a difference. The process also saves you constantly calling back a minicab operator to be told that the cab you ordered is “only 10 minutes away”; real-time texts and emails and, in the case of LDNtaxiApp, an updating map help you track the cab’s progress as it makes its way to you.

Cab apps are not the only way that technology and smartphones are changing how city dwellers are getting around. Car clubs, which give members the use of pool cars parked around city centres, have also been quick to spot the potential of targeting a population of young people who may not be able to afford to own a car but never leave home without their phone and may need transport at short notice.

Several companies, including the biggest — Streetcar and Zipcar, which recently joined forces, and Hertz — have launched a range of apps that enable members to search for and book a car within minutes. The apps can guide them to the nearest available vehicle, get the car to beep its horn to help them find it in a crowded car park and in some cases unlock the doors (no key or card required). It means that members no longer have to book hours or days in advance to be able to use the vehicles and has proved a hit with the car clubs: they have seen their membership grow by 50% over the past year.

“There is a generation that no longer thinks that the car is a must-have but the iPhone is a must-have,” says Chas Ball, the chief executive of CarPlus, a charity that supports car clubs and car-sharing schemes. “Some members want to do things more spontaneously, as they might do with their own car, and car clubs lend themselves to booking on the fly.”

Car clubs started life in London and can now be found in many British cities, including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Manchester and Oxford. To date there are estimated to be 170,000 members of such clubs, a number expected to grow to 200,000 over the next year. Members typically pay an annual fee and then book any car at an hourly rate.

Until the arrival of the apps, members had to plan in advance to get the most out of these clubs, deciding when and where they wanted to use one of the cars and then booking it either via a website or over the phone. The apps enable them to book cars on the hoof with little or no notice.

As with the other apps, the car club systems work by using a phone’s GPS capability to determine where the member is. They then scan their records to find vehicles that are closest to that position. The apps are able to locate the closest free car, book it for the time needed and then use the phone’s Google Maps software to guide you there.

To use the car, the member waves a smartcard over a windscreen-mounted reader to unlock it. In the case of ­Streetcar, the app even does that for you by allowing you to unlock the vehicle via a logo on the phone screen. Another large firm, City Car Club, says it has an app in the pipeline.

Zipcar and other car clubs now allow instant booking by app (Scott Barbour)

It is not only dedicated car clubs that have seen the benefit of using smartphone technology to encourage people to sign up. Major car manufacturers are also beginning to take notice. BMW recently launched a car club scheme in Germany, where members get the use of some of the cars in its range without having to buy them.

The company’s DriveNow scheme was launched in Munich this year. Members pay a €29 (£26) registration fee and then have use of 300 cars, including Mini Coopers, BMW 1-series and Mini convertibles, paying 29 cents a minute. The cost includes parking in Munich, fuel and insurance. “There is no pre-booking,” says Ian Robertson, head of sales and marketing at BMW. “You should not have to walk more than 200 metres to find a car and the phone app [iPhone and Android] tells you where the cars are.”

He adds that there are plans to bring the service to Britain, although no date has yet been set.

Even if you don’t want to join a car club and your journey is too long for a taxi, you can still find an app that may help. Carpooling.com, the largest car-pooling network in Europe, launched a UK version, rideshare.co.uk, a year ago to capitalise on the fact than owning a car is becoming too expensive for many young people. Its app, which has been downloaded 10,000 times in Britain, allows users either to list a route they are driving or to find someone making the journey they wish to make.

“The app gives you the ability to stay mobile under all circumstances — during strikes, if public transport is too full or if you get to a station and find that the ticket is too expensive,” says Odile Beniflah, a spokeswoman for rideshare.co.uk. “It gives members direct access to drivers or passengers, with the possibility of calling or emailing them directly from the app.”

Now, where did you put those car keys?

Zipcar

For: iPhone, Android; free
Membership fee: £50 a year (£25 if spending £50 a month)
Hourly cost: From £4.50 (£4.28 for users spending £50 a month)
Distance limit: 40 miles a day; then 23p a mile
How does it work? As well as the usual map of available cars and ability to book or extend your reservation period on the move, Zipcar’s app features an interactive key fob with buttons to lock and unlock the car, as well as one for the horn. Press it and your reserved car will beep its horn to help you find it. You still have to swipe your smartcard over the windscreen reader to unlock the doors, though.

Streetcar

For: iPhone; free
Membership fee: £59.50 a year
Hourly cost: From £5.25
Distance limit: 20 miles a day; then 23p a mile
How does it work? Streetcar’s app goes one better than Zipcar’s with an onscreen swipecard to unlock the car during the reservation, with no need to use a physical card at all. Slide your finger across the screen and the car is opened. Swipe again and it is locked. Beware, though: the app uses the phone network to contact a server, which sends a beep/lock/unlock command to the reserved car. This means you could accidentally unlock it a mile away and leave it vulnerable.

Kabbee

For: iPhone; Android and BlackBerry to come; free
Cost per fare: App allows you to pick cheapest fare on offer
Distance limit: Within Greater London
How does it work? Launch the Kabbee app and as long as you’ve got the iPhone’s location function running and a 3G data connection, you can fix your start point, type in your destination and receive near-instant quotes from minicab companies, complete with times the cars should arrive. Select one to receive in-app and email confirmation and details of the car. Fares can be pre-paid out of a Kabbee account, settled via a credit card linked to that account or paid in cash to the driver.

LDNtaxiApp

For: iPhone; free
Cost per fare: Determined by meter
Distance limit: Within Greater London
How does it work? Digitally hail a black cab on a London street by sending a request out over 3G with this app, with the iPhone’s location feature providing the start point and you keying in the destination. Any black-cab driver within a one-mile radius can answer the hail and drive to pick you up (the meter starts running on his arrival). The cab’s progress towards you is tracked on Google Maps, although in practice this was hit and miss. You are sent the driver’s name and photo; he can see your name and photo.

Pick-up position is fixed by the iPhone itself (Dwayne Senior)

Fare fight in new cabbie wars

Matt Bingham tests rival apps that pinpoint your location and send a taxi straight to you

The bitter rivalry between London’s black cabs and the minicab industry has spilt into cyberspace. Only a black cab can legally be flagged down on the capital’s streets, but the Kabbee app allows people to digitally “hail” a minicab. Black-cab drivers are fighting back: LDNtaxiApp lets you in effect book a taxi as you would a minicab. But do these apps live up to their claims? We took to the streets to find out.

First up, Kabbee, for a minicab ride from north London to the East End. We’d already created an account and loaded it with money, to cut out the cab-ride tradition of a cash machine stop halfway through the journey. The app used the iPhone’s location technology to pinpoint our position and within seconds we received a dozen quotes.

The first available car, however, was going to take 15 minutes to be with us. With times such as that, Kabbee is not going to replace the flag-down-and-hire simplicity of London’s hackney cabs.

Having chosen a competitive quote, we received a text to tell us the model and number of the car. Our driver, Pritesh Shah, turned up right on time in his Ford Galaxy and the journey was efficient — guided by the voice of Snoop Dogg on the sat nav. Because we had paid in advance, we couldn’t leave a tip. Sorry, Pritesh.

Using LDNtaxiApp, we requested a pick-up from Soho to go to London zoo. Three cabs were in range; fastest to answer was Paul Hutchinson, whose name, photo and registration were sent as an in-app message. He took more than 10 minutes to get to us, his cab crawling through the congestion on the app’s map. During this time three black cabs for hire went past — LDNtaxiApp needs more drivers on its books.

The journey was genuinely novel. Knowing your driver’s name and face makes it much easier to chat to the back of his head. We were the first fare Paul had received via the app (“When my iPhone buzzed I thought, ‘What was that?’”).

Both apps work as billed, but they aren’t currently suitable if you’re in a hurry. That could change as more drivers sign up. Now if only someone could make an app that would take you south of the river after 10pm.