Open-Source Taxi App

The goal of this research is to determine:

• Issues with current taxi apps and business models
• what open-source taxi app alternatives exist, to what extent they have been successful and if not, the reasons for not achieving success and the challenges they have faced
• what it would take to make such an initiative successful from a technical, legal, human resources and operational perspective
• if we should take an existing solution and modify it, or develop from scratch

Corporate Business Models and their Issues

According to this website, there are 300 million users of taxi apps with Uber and DiDi responsible for 150 million of those users. The taxi app market size is expected to be $283 billion by 2028. Often these apps take a large portion of the fare (a lot of information is available for this for example [1], [2], [3]). Some taxi companies take a smaller commission e.g. DiDi takes about 20% (source), compared to Uber and Lyft's 40 to 60% (source) and this shows its possible to take less commission. Many people believe that open-source taxi apps with more transparent, fair and lean business models should exist with minimum fees that are fully and available for examination/audit. Many have wondered and inquired if such apps exist ([1], [2] etc).

It doesn't seem like there are any open-source business models that have been successful. Various projects exist on Github but there's no real-world execution/follow-up and user adoption which is understood. A successful widely adopted taxi app requires more than just a working taxi app.

LibreTaxi

The most famous open-source taxi app LibreTaxi is actually not an app. Its a Telegram service (user needs to have the Telegram messaging app). A taxi app should be easy to use/intuitive (working through a messaging/chat interface to get a taxi ride is not intuitive). Its also not clear if LibreTaxi has been successful in user adoption although it deserves support as its a free open-source project. Here's an interview with the developer

Notable Alternatives

• Wridz - lets the driver keep 100% of the fare and tips but charges the driver a variable subscription fee (e.g. $25 to $100/month). Gaining gradual adoption in big cities but there's no open-source code and its a regular corporate entity (not community owned)

• [Defunct] Ride Austin - "nonprofit rideshare service created by the Austin community." See comments here on Reddit - Github Source code

Next Steps

The next step is to examine any existing source code and use that or start from scratch. Someone wrote a development guide.