Ride-hailing app Uber is set to launch in its first city in Scotland on Friday afternoon (4 p.m. local time), with more cities to follow in the coming months. A planned launch in Edinburgh earlier this year was delayed, but is expected to resume following the Glasgow launch.
While Uber already operates in seven cities across the UK, its peer-to-peer service, UberPOP, has not yet been rolled out in the country. The service operates pretty smoothly in the U.S. — though Europe has proven a tougher market to crack on that front, and the UK appears to be no different.
“We are super excited about this. It is the first city to launch in Scotland and is our biggest UK launch to date,” Max Lines, Uber’s general manager for Glasgow, told The Scotsman on Friday. “I would love to launch in Edinburgh soon, but I am not exactly sure when it will be. We still need to do a bit of preparation, but if we could do it in the next two months, that would be great.”
“There has been huge demand over the last few months in Glasgow from customers looking at the app. We have been pushing all of this week to get as many drivers to sign up as possible,” he added.
Back home in the U.S., Uber this week rolled out its new AMBER alerts service to send missing children reports to drivers across the country in real time. But the company is still facing setbacks in countries like Australia, and trying its darnest to crack the huge market that is China, as the government there introduces new regulations for car-hailing apps.
We’ve reached out to Uber for further comment on the Glasgow launch, and will update you if we hear back.
