Published on January 24th, 2017 | by Guest

Uber: The Definitive Fact File [Infographic]

New technology has given birth to new ways to offer transportation and Uber is a leader in that field. Just download an app on your phone and you’re ready to tap the app, let Uber know your destination, choose your vehicle type and check pricing. Now you’re ready to request and pay for a ride. At one time taxis were Uber’s primary competition, but now LYFT has entered the picture, pitting both technological travel methods against the established mode of transportation. You probably already guessed the top destination for this company, the airport, of course.

Uber uses every day people as their drivers, for now at least. Every month they add 50,000 more. These new drivers range in age, with 25 percent over 50 and just 19 percent under the age of 30. They’re made up of 86 percent male and 14 percent female. Over half the Uber drivers, 51 percent, put in 15 hours or less each week. Of all the drivers, 10,000 have a military background and half of all the drivers never had a job driving as their livelihood before joining the Uber team. Uber paid a lot for these drivers. In the last quarter of 2014, it amounted to 650 million dollars.

Even though Uber is growing by leaps and bounds, it has some growing pains. In the first six months of 2016, Uber lost $1.2 billion. A large portion of that was payment to drivers and new technology. It plans to lower the cost to drivers by replacing them with self-driving vehicles, starting in down-town Pittsburgh, PA.

When you consider the growth of Uber, it’s easy to understand the growing pains. They’re in over 527 cities world wide, in 77 different countries. They’ve taken over two billion trips, with a billion of those in the last six months. In just the month of June, Uber made 62 million trips. An easy way to see how massive this company is is by adding the mileage of all the trips taken the past five years. You’d accumulate enough to take a trip to Saturn and back.

Uber has more than 8 million users throughout the world and the app is being downloaded daily. In fact, in the month of July alone, it was downloaded 3.8 million times. Uber outdoes it’s competition when it comes to Smartphones with LYFT getting only 2.3 percent of the users and Uber receiving 8.4 percent.

Read on to find out more facts about the phenomenon that is Uber.