New Taxi Ride App in Tokyo
There is a new player in Tokyo in the taxi ride requesting space: Sony. Yes, that Sony. The creator of the Walkman, VAIO laptops and consumer electronics is entering the ride hailing app space in Japan with S.RIDE. One thing to understand is taxi services are highly regulated in Japan. It is illegal to run a ride sharing operation where consumer vehicles are used.
10,000 Vehicles in Tokyo 🚕
S.RIDE has partnered with six taxi operators that will be available in the app:
Green Cab
International Motor Vehicles
Kotobuki Kotsu
Yamato Car Transportation
Checker Cab
Tokyo Private Taxi Cooperative
These companies serve the 23 wards of Tokyo and the Musashino and Mitaka areas.
We’ve gone and added links to S.RIDE to our Taxi page for Tokyo and will update that link as more information becomes available. So far it looks like the S.RIDE app is only available in the Japan iOS and Google Play stores, so visitors may not be able to download the app. This is a pretty large oversight, but I’m sure localization is coming first before they let visitors use the service.
