While waiting for the robot, old taxi stories come to mind. When the driver on the way home asked the “Bar Rouge” to charge five times the price and then asked for a fist fight. The drive from the airport in Pudong when the driver reported the three apartments he had bought in central Shanghai twenty years ago for a few thousand euros. Today the man is a millionaire.
What will the robot tell to steer the taxi that is just arriving? On the door is the logo of Didi, the Chinese transport service provider that has pushed Uber out of the largest market in the world. The Uber chauffeurs make 15 million trips a day, worldwide. Didi has 30 million, mainly in China. Uber is worth $ 57 billion on the stock exchange. Didi flirts with the IPO and is valued by investors at a similar value. At least before the corona virus. Because the pandemic has locked people at home in China more than in other countries and kept them from driving a taxi because of the risk of infection.