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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Sun, 10 Oct 2004 12:03 |
Although popular with passengers, Zingo mobile phone taxi hailing service launched just over a year ago in London is struggling to sign up drivers and has twice as many passenger requests as available drivers.
Launched in April 2003, the service quickly proved popular with passengers. The number of drivers grew up to December 2003 to over 900 licensed taxis in London and is also available in Dartford in Kent, but is now running at a loss.
After the Christmas and New Year holiday period, the service reached its peak in the number of new drivers signing up. The service, which costs the driver £15 a week, was originally planed to equip an initial fleet of up to 4,000 taxis of the approximately 20,000 taxis in London.
However the lack of drivers has limited the number of journey sales andf the service has struggled to break even.
LBS & GPS
When a passenger makes a call to Zingo from their mobile, location-based technology pinpoint where they are, whilst global positioning satellites identify Zingo taxis in the vicinity. Within seconds passengers are automatically connected to the cab driver on his hands-free mobile phone.
The passenger then gives the driver their precise location, who in turn switches off the ‘for hire’ light and come straight to collect them.
Operating Loss
In addition to the fare on the meter, customers pay a collection fee of £1.60,
Manganese Bronze Holdings Plc, owners of the service consolidated the cost base of the Zingo operation with its finance business in March to achieve a reduction of about half of the Zingo monthly operating costs. However this did not eliminate the monthly losses and Zingo is again expected to be loss making in the financial year ending 31 July 2005.
Driver Recruitment
With the popular customer response to the service, Zingo is not giving up. It plans to increase its efforts to recruit drivers during the autumn, including continued discussions with existing radio circuits to use their drivers.
Zingo have also had a number of discussions with organisations about licensing the Zingo system for use in cities abroad.
www.manganese.com
www.zingotaxi.co.uk
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