Uber Knowingly Leased Defective Cars in Singapore

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Uber is in trouble for reportedly knowingly leasing cars that were defective in Singapore.

UberBack in January, a rented Uber vehicle caught fire in January with a 61-year-old driver inside. In the Asian country, Uber reportedly buys vehicles from unauthorized suppliers that don’t exactly have the top safety standards around.

The transportation services provider first entered Singapore in 2013, where it was difficult for the company to bring in drivers who had their own cars. It costs car owners tens of thousands of dollars to get the ownership permit necessary to driver for Uber, and car purchases face taxes of over 100%.

Around this time, Uber started buying its own cars as then-CEO Travis Kalanick got an $800 million loan. Instead of buying from authorized dealers, he bought the vehicles from companies that offered him a savings of 12%.

The cars were then rented out to Uber drivers through a company owned by Uber called Lion City Rentals. Thankfully for the company, the driver who was in a faulty car is doing well, but the incident raised eyebrows regarding the safety standards that the company is implementing.

One vehicle that Uber purchased was the Honda Vezel SUV, which proved to have some issues, prompting a recall on April 2016. The company got about 1,000 of these, and it claims it has fixed the issues with these SUVs now.


Article printed from InvestorPlace Media, https://investorplace.com/2017/08/uber-singapore/.

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