Toronto, Ontario — In this weekly Tuesday Ticker, Uber reaches a deal to list New York City taxis on its app—and it doesn’t plan to stop there. Plus, Volkswagen unveils severe sales declines in its Q1 2022 financial results.
Coll-cab-oration
Uber has reached an agreement to list New York City taxis on its app, the ridesharing platform announced in late March.
Two taxi-hailing apps, both operated by Curb and Creative Mobile Technologies will integrate their software with Uber, allowing users to book taxi rides in the Uber app.
News of the deal sent Uber shares up four percent in the immediate hours following the announcement.
Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in February 2022 that the company plans to bring more taxis into its app, and beyond the Big Apple.
“I will tell you we wanna get every single taxi in the world onto our platform by 2025,” he said in an interview with CNBC.
Taxis are already available on the Uber app in certain countries, including Spain, Germany and South Korea.
On Volkswagen’s recent slump
Volkswagen has kicked off 2022 with disappointing Q1 financial results for the North American market, reporting a near 30 percent dip in the number of units sold in Q1.
The first quarter of 2022 saw the German OEM sell 65,993 vehicles in the North American market, marking a 28.5 percent dip from the same period in 2021.
According to the Q1 results, Volkswagen was only able to increase sales on two of its models: the all-electric ID.4, which sold 2,755 units in the first quarter and comprised 4.2 percent of the total units sold, and the Golf R, which the automaker has sold 780 units thus far in 2022. The Golf R increase, however, can be attributed to the fact Volkswagen sold but one unit of the model last year.
The cumulative number of Volkswagen ID.4 sold in the U.S. market is nearing 20,000 units, according to data from InsideEVs—more than the cumulative sales of the retired Volkswagen e-Golf over several years.
Last week also saw Volkswagen announce its goal to cut 60 percent of its internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle lineup by 2030.
Arno Antlitz, Volkswagen’s CFO told the Financial Times recently that the automaker’s “key target is not growth.” He said the OEM is more focussed on “quality and on margins, rather than on volume and market share.”
He also added that, despite Volkwagen’s US$56 billion investment in EVs, the automaker “is not adding capacity.”
“We rework factory by factory,” said Antlitz. “We have a lower fixed-cost based, so we are less dependent on volume and less dependent on growth.”
