The Case of the Impossibly Cheap Uber | The Friday Update

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Friday Update, in which I give a little insight into what I’ve been up to for the past seven days.This week

This past week has been a week of impossibilities.

Last Thursday, my editor, Georgia, approached me with what she called an “ethical dilemma”.

See, she’d popped over to my house to help film a couple of segments for an upcoming video about testosterone ads.

And, finding herself running late, she’d had a look on the Uber app to see whether there were any cars available.

The important context here is that Uber has only just launched in Plymouth.

The local council approved its entry into the city in November, and the past couple of months have begun to see an increasing number of bookable cars appearing on the app.

Crucially, though, those cars are dirt cheap.

Georgia found she was able to book an Uber between our houses for just £3.33; very nearly cheaper than a bus.

Initially, this felt like an old story. After all, London has had Uber for 13 years at this point, and some cities in the US for even longer.

But, I realised we had the opportunity to document first hand the tactics which Uber uses when arriving in new communities; and also to consider what the specific arrival of Uber in my home city tells us about Britain’s changing place in the world.

It was an opportunity to investigate the case of the impossibly cheap Uber in a fun and fast fashion.

In fact, the second impossible thing we’ve done this week is decide to make this video super speedily.

Where, usually, a new video idea would go to the back of the list and therefore not see the light of day for months and months, we made the decision to be really careful to limit the focus of the video in order to make it a little shorter and snappier than usual.

It’s been a really fun exercise in a more South Park style approach to making things!

In fact, having only conceived of the idea last Thursday, this afternoon, we’re popping out to chat to some taxi drivers about what their thoughts on the platform’s arrival in the city are. And, while it will likely be heavily adjusted after those interviews, much of the early draft of the script is already in place.

I guess, like Uber, we’re moving fast and breaking things!

We’ll see how it turns out!

Thanks as ever for your generous support and I’ll look forward to updating you more next week!!