Offering an olive branch to European regulators, Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick said the company intends to add 50, 000 jobs in Europe and get 400, 000 cars off the road, VentureBeat said.
Such growth could help invigorate the sluggish European economy, but in order for that to happen, he said, governments across Europe need to rethink regulations that are hampering the expansion plans of the San Francisco-based ride-sharing service, the website said.
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Kalanick indicated he wants to forge agreements in Europe that are similar to Uber’s recent partnership with Boston to share data and technology, TheNextWeb.com said.
“We want to make 2015 the year we establish a new partnership with EU cities. We want to promote core city functions through partnerships on data and technology”, he said.
“By the end of 2015, if we make these partnerships happen, we’ll create 50, 000 new EU jobs. We want to take 400, 00 cars off EU roads in 2015”, the CEO added.
Kalanick made the remarks at the Digital Life Design Conference in Munich, Germany during one of his biggest on-stage public appearances since Uber was battered by a series of public-relations nightmares late last year. The controversies included an executive talking about campaigns to discredit journalists, questions about how Uber handles the privacy of users, and accusations that a driver in India raped a passenger, VentureBeat said.
All of these were in addition to a huge number of regulatory confrontations Uber faces around the globe. Indeed, Kalanick spoke in one of several European countries that are trying to ban Uber, the website said.
Still, in the talk that was followed by a Q&A session, Kalanick said he wanted to establish a new partnership with European cities, and provided a series of stats about jobs the company has created in places like Paris, where the company also faces a series of regulatory headaches, VentureBeat said.
