Uber appears to be continuing its national expansion today, with the soft-launch of the disruptive car service in Chicago. Pandora’s CTO Tom Conrad just Tweeted about using the new service in the Windy City.
In case you aren’t familiar with Uber, the service allows you to order a black car to come to your location on the mobile app, You can actually track your car as it comes to your location as the app tracks the car via GPS. Payments are handled automatically by charging the card you have on file (no swiping necessary), and it costs at least 50% more than a taxi.
The service has a loyal following in San Francisco, debuted in New York and Seattle recently and appears to also be eying Boston and D.C. as potential markets.
It’s unclear if pricing will be different in Chicago, compared to other cities. Uber says that during this test, the service will have limited supply of cars and low availability. As we saw with Seattle, Uber pricing is less because of the general cost of living in the city compared to New York and San Francisco. The company is also testing reduced pricing in San Francisco.