#UberX

There are some absolutely terrible people in this world who are fools for prestige, suckers for any shiny bauble or deplorable frippery that might permit them the despicable foppery of believing themselves to be somehow better than their fellow men for the least justifiable of reasons.

I am one of those terrible people. I wear Kiton suits even though I am so breathtakingly ugly that no manner of haute couture can make any possible difference. I have a “Black Series” toothbrush. When I saw a fellow racer who happened to be a hugely wealthy fellow from Hong Kong pull out an “Infinite” series Visa card to lay down next to my “Signature” series Visa, I did not rest until I was also in possession of an “Infinite” Visa that was stamped from actual metal instead of merely molded out of plastic. When my plans to acquire a European noble title from some down-and-out distant relatives around the turn of the century foundered, I actually purchased a barony from a (very small, not quite legitimate) country.

There is no activity or purchase too ridiculous for me to undertake in the name of perceived prestige. Or so I thought … until the day I paid $78 dollars to ride in an Uber Select.

There must be something about being the world’s most powerful automaker that makes you just, you know, wanna spread some branding around like your showroom is a big slice of bread and your best-loved nameplates are just sweet, sweet chrome jelly. How else can you explain Toyota’s attempt to expand the “Prius” into a three-car lineup, in the same way that General Motors gave us a veritable squadron of Cutlasses in the early ’80s?

The original Prius, now in its fourth and most bizarre-looking iteration yet, is an unmitigated triumph that probably has more millionaire owners than the Bentley Flying Spur, but at the same time is often the car of choice for cost-conscious Midwestern families. The Prius V, on the other hand … well, let’s just say that it isn’t flying off showroom floors. The Prius C has been just as unpopular with buyers while also managing to become the subject of several negative reviews, including a one-out-of-five-star recap from Car and Driver.

“This is the perfect car for the person who doesn’t care about what, exactly, he’s driving,” quoth AutoWeek, but over the past year The Littlest Prius has become quite popular with a section of the American driving population that really cares about what they drive — because it’s how they are making a living.

After a week in which I was burned in effigy by some “autowriters” who didn’t much care for my editorial about their complete and total lack of ethics (don’t worry, fellas — I still won’t send you a bunch of web traffic, er, I mean, name names), I found myself in a situation that Alanis Morissette would call “ironic.”

I was going to spend the weekend in Philadelphia at the glorious Hotel Monaco, right in the Old City across the street from Independence Hall. Thanks to a last-minute deal, I got a magnificent rate of $100/night, but there was still the specter of the $43/night parking rate looming over my head, not to mention the difficulties of finding parking elsewhere in the city once I actually retrieved my vehicle from the valet.

As a result, I decided to go without a rental car for the four-day weekend, instead depending entirely on Uber and the city’s taxi services to squire Mrs. Bark and me around the City of Brotherly Love. This was the perfect way to test out the only viable theory that some of my colleagues in the automotive journalism (not that there’s much journalism going on, but that’s another subject for another time) game put forth as to why some writers don’t own cars.

“It’s too difficult and/or expensive to own a car in the city,” they said. As somebody who was born in the Greater New York City area, but has spent most of his life in the Midwest and the South, I was eager to see if I, too, would make the choice to go carelessly carless on the eastern seaboard.

Officials in New South Wales, Australia are banning UberX cars from their roads for three months after failing to prosecute their drivers, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Authorities charged 24 drivers with violating the state’s taxi laws, saying the UberX car-sharing service couldn’t properly monitor and vet its 4,000 drivers in Sydney. Those charges were dropped due to “evidentiary issues” and the drivers avoided fines up to $70,000.

Now the state says it’ll ban private UberX cars from the road instead.

Many optionally available subscription-based services, such as OnStar, offering automated crash reporting could lose their marketing edge in 2018.

Chicago Uber customers are the first to take a ride in a Chinese-made EV, thanks to a deal between BYD and the transportation network company.

Uber wants to do more than disrupt the traditional taxi service, seeking to bring its pricing low enough to replace your own vehicle, period.