Taxi Times International - January 2015 - English

OUR COMMENT
PRODUCT NEWS
Wim Faber (left) and
Jürgen Hartmann.
‘Clip-it’ smartphone holder is suitable
for phones between 5 and 8.5 cm wide.
‘Dock-it’ has a ball joint that is glued to
the back of the smartphone.
TRY IT
FOR FREE
A VERSATILE INDUSTRY –
NOT JUST IN PARIS AND
BRUSSELS …
During and in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris the taxi
trade showed how finely it is woven into the fabric of our society.
Taxi Times is
giving away
10 Wedo
smartphone
holders. Please send
your entries with the
keyword ‘Wedo’ to
redaktion@taxi-times.taxi.
SMARTPHONE HOLDER THAT FITS
INTO VENTILATION SLOTS
In November, the City of Light - Paris (in
case you had any doubts) – became the
focal point for good and evil. On that fateful
Friday evening of November 13, taxidrivers
working in the areas where the attacks took
place gave shelter to people fleeing the sites
of the atrocities committed by the terrorists.
Help was needed desperately and
many taxidrivers chose to drive to the areas
where the attacks had taken place and
transported wounded victims and their
family members to hospitals or home –
often without expecting any form of compensation.
And when some metro lines
were closed for a few days, taxis provided
the most flexible and safest form of public
transport in a city avoiding the normal and
crowded forms of public transport.
OLD-FASHIONED? NO, HIGHLY
ADVANCED!
Our report on the Eurocab meeting
on page 16 shows that the answers of
the taxi industry to new digital innovations
are on a high technical level,
making them at least equal to the
products of the start-ups. And they
are precisely tailored to the needs
of the industry - which makes them
even better.
The same happened in Brussels, a day
later when the highest terror alarm was
given, the entire metro system in the city
was closed and many Bruxellois relied on
taxis for safe and reliable transportation.
To such an extent that local radio and TV
focused on the taxi drivers who kept on
driving. So swamped was Taxi Verts’ dispatch
centre, that administrative office
staff had to drop their normal work in order
to answer the many phone calls to Brussels’
largest radio circuit. One taxi driver
told the media how safe his customers felt
taking a taxi and how – much more than
normal – they needed to talk about the curfew
that held their city in a dark and iron
grip for days.
Being part of the local society is what
makes the taxi industry strong: not even
hesitating when it can do a bit more than
its normal job: carrying people around, yes,
but also providing shelter, safety and an
interested listening ear.
Paris also became the symbol for another
‘good’: the climate initative taxis4smartcities.org,
started by Paris radio circuit
Groupe G7 and quickly joined by taxi companies
all over Europe. Unfortunately the
prior evil banned the taxi companies from
showing their new climate initiative on the
Paris boulevards during the climate conference
COP21. It would have been so nice to
see a taxi demonstration for climate measures
and an (even) more environmentallyfriendly
and durable taxi trade, as too
many initiatives by the industry go unnoticed.
The past year didn’t only highlight the
taxi industry’s role in the social fabric or
as part of public transport: the taxi trade
is no longer only pre-occupied with the role
of all sorts of apps - or TNC’s as we now
call them, after the example given by our
US colleagues. It is again focusing on its
(many) diverse roles and challenging
future. A myriad of topics used to be part
of the discussions in the trade, before everyone
got this myopic app-view. Conferences
like the one in Berlin, an excellent
BZP-initiative dealing with disruption and
digitalisation –yes, of course – but also
with durability and technical innovation
like the autonomous car and new forms of
mobility plus changing demands from our
client base, showed that the future matters
again to the taxi industry and its drivers
and operators. The taxi industry is too versatile
to only have one topic of discussion.
And it is not defined by apps only.
Jürgen Hartmann
EDITOR
Wim Faber
EDITOR
PHOTO: Gudrun Hartmann
PHOTOS: Wedo
Now that rides are hailed via data
transmission to smartphones, it is
essential for mobile devices to be
positioned correctly inside the taxi. Smartphone
holders attached to the windscreen
tend to block the view of the street. Germany-based
company Wedo, whose products
can be purchased on their own website
wedo.de or through popular online shops
for €12.95, have developed holders that can
be installed in ventilation slots. The ball
joint can be rotated 360 degrees, allowing
taxi drivers to set their own optimal viewing
angle on their mobile phones. The
smartphones can be attached in two ways:
The ‘clip-it’ model secures mobile phones
between 5 and 8.5 cm wide in a clamp with
a spring mechanism, whereas for the ‘dockit’
model, a magnetic metal sheet is attached
to the phone. This can be done either by
placing a rectangular wafer inside the
smartphone case or by using an adhesive
gel that can be reactivated by washing
under running water.
jh
6 JANUARY / 2016 TAXI