Taxi-hailing app Uber is giving a new name to surge pricing — upfront fare.

Uber hopes that by showing fares to customers before booking a ride, a practice it follows for shared rides on its platform, it can be more successful.

Uber says it is able to predict the fare for a trip by having users enter their destination to calculate the distance, trip time, and demand for cabs in a given location.

It will not ask users to fill in the surge multiplier, hopefully putting surge pricing out of sight. It has piloted this offering in five cities in India: New Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai, and a few cities in the US.

Surge pricing has become the topic of many a debate with many users as well as governments. Delhi, for instance, had banned surge pricing during the odd-even experiment, while it has been suspended in Karnataka after the state brought in new rules to end surge pricing. Uber has taken the Karnataka government to court over the rules that came in April, which mandate taxi aggregators including rival Ola, to secure licence, ban surge pricing, and cap fares in line with the state prescribed limit. The Karnataka High Court will have the next hearing on June 28 .

“And when fares go up due to increased demand, instead of surge lightning bolts and pop-up screens, riders are given the actual fare before they request their ride. There’s no complicated maths and no surprises: Passengers can just sit back and enjoy the ride,” Arundhati Singh and Dennis Zhao, Product Managers, said.

The upfront fare experiment was first tried on Uber’s shared ride service.

In India, 25 per cent of Uber’s rides in Delhi and Bengaluru, its two largest cities, are through this service.

Source: Business Standard