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#5927 BlacKab

Basically you have a virtual car. With a driver. Here's how BlacKab works:

You think, I should be getting to some place. You look at your smart phone and touch the BlacKab appKab. It tells you a Kab is 5 minutes away. You touch the "Come get me" button. You then finish the rest of your mango shake until a few minutes later your smart phone beeps. You walk outside to see a sleek black taxi with the words "BlacKab client priority" waiting for you. You climb inside and the driver says "Good afternoon Ms Yorname, where would you like to go?" You then go to said destination, climb out, pay nothing and go inside.

Then comes the weekend. You check your phone again and select "I drive". It tells you that cars for this weekend are this much per day and the top few cars you prefer. You select one and confirm what time you'd like it. You wake up Saturday morning with the car in front of your house with the keys in the mailbox. You take it for the weekend and then park it where it was. A guy comes, checks it over and gets the keys from you.

At the end of the month, you get a simple bill showing what you used and what was charged to your account. And what you would be paying if you owned a car of your own.

Economics speaking it should be cheaper. Isn't it like you own a car with a driver and while you aren't using it you're renting it out to other people? Implementation requires recruiting taxi drivers with decent cars, getting them smart phones and painting their cabs. And a little training. They can use their cabs as they normally would when they don't have a client buzz on their phone. And of course some GPS enriched app building is in order. I could imagine also making it "seem" as much like you own the car and the driver is yours. Maybe the driver is always called Kuya. Maybe there are some sort of saved preferences in your profile (updated by drivers each time you ride) and the driver arranges the car to your preference before you get in (where you like the seat, water bottle available, child's car seat, etc.) The app can have the client's photo so the driver can always pick you out of a crowd waiting for taxis and no one sneaks into "your" kab.
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