Taking Taxis Trumps Sharing Rides

The battle for dominance in urban areas between ride-hailing start-ups like Lyft and Uber and more traditional taxi cab companies has been waged since the aforementioned services got their first licenses. But nowhere has it been as hard-fought as in London, home to the iconic black taxi cabs, where it included court cases and widespread protests by cab drivers over the years. According to a statement by Uber, this battle might soon be over though: Come 2024, the company will offer cab drivers in England's biggest metropolis "jobs with a pre-determined price range through Uber, which they can accept or reject" according to reporting by Reuters. Even though this will be counted as at least an image win for mobility-as-a-service and the ride-hailing industry, most people still seemingly prefer traditional taxis over Uber and its competitors.

As an analysis of our Statista Consumer Insights shows, survey participants in many of the world's biggest economies still rely on taxi cabs instead of ride-sharing or short-distance ride-hailing services. In South Korea, for example, only nine percent of the people surveyed used the latter options at all, while 58 percent at least occasionally took a taxi. Although no other country shows a gulf that wide, similar leanings can be seen in the answers of German, Canadian and United Kingdom residents questioned. The United States, the home turf for Uber and Lyft, is the only country where taxi cabs lose out against ride-sharing and ride-hailing companies. Of the U.S. residents surveyed, 82 percent never use taxi cabs, while 29 percent take ride-shares or Ubers at least occasionally. One important thing to note: The frequent usage of taxis and ride-hailing vehicles is rare across all markets, with India topping the list with 12 (taxis) and 13 percent (ride-sharing/-hailing).

According to our Statista Mobility Market Insights, ride-hailing as a segment of the shared rides market still exhibits much growth potential compared to traditional taxi services. In 2023, the former overtook the latter, netting $154 billion in revenue worldwide against $151 billion made by taxi companies. By 2027, ride-hailing will supposedly generate $202 billion across all markets. As of now, the biggest piece of this pie belongs to Uber with a 25 percent market share as of November 2022, followed by Lyft (8 percent), Bolt and inDriver (5 percent each). This doesn't mean that the market leader is in any shape or form profitable, though. Last year alone, Uber reported a net loss of $9 billion, its worst result since 2016, despite revenues skyrocketing to $32 billion in the same year.