Montreal’s all-electric, app-based taxi service, Téo Taxi, has reached the end of the road. After a failed cash call last week, and suspicions that Taxelco (Téo Taxi’s parent company) would be placing itself under protection of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, Téo has finally announced that it will cease its operations. François Bonnardel, Quebec’s Transport Minister, has called the Téo Taxi business model “broken,” according to the Gazette.
With Taxelco remaining tight-lipped about the situation, many are left wondering how the brainchild of serial entrepreneur and tech millionaire Alexandre Taillefer failed, despite benefiting from sizable provincial grants and support as well as several rounds of funding from seasoned investment firms.
h/t foobert
What makes anyone think they “failed”??? Did not the Right People get the right money from those provincial grants and such???
Or are you truly stupid enough to believe they meant for the scheme to ever be self-supporitng???
this. It’s as if the Grope and Flail has no idea about how shell corporations work.
I’d be curious to find out what sort of hit the private investors actually took when all is said and done, after accounting for income tax losses.
Max says no more Corporate welfare. Back to you Andrew.
And for those that might have been alive, I would remind you of Prime Minister Mulroney’s involvement in a submarine company that never produced one working submersible vehicle and still got public funding… If it sounds to good to be true, then it probably is a con.
There is a simple solution to “save” Teo Taxi … government control. Have the Montreal government simply ELIMINATE the competition. Ban Lyft and Uber. Claim they don’t pay “prevailing wage”. Chastise them for not providing PAID paternity leave. Mandate that ALL taxi’s operating within Montreal have to be electric … and painted “green”. If the public won’t DO what is “morally correct” (we’ve ‘evolved’ from ‘politically correct’) … then the government will FORCE them to do it. Problem solved, eh comrade?
The taxi industry is its own MAFIA. Just look at BC and the corruption, with the prevention, of Lyft and Uber from being allowed to be viable, while sweetheart deals are cut with the existing hyphenated Canadians that run this industry. If anything like that exists in queerbec, its no surprise, regardless of the wasted public money, that it failed.
Bombardier School of Business plan.
So electric cars don’t like the winter? That’s a new one…
The drivers are unionized and get their money no matter if there is a fare or not. I’m sure the fares are not competitive to make up for the additional overhead. That’s how the competition killed this government assisted company. Uber is a tough business to make money without the additional cost of unionized labour.
“despite benefiting from sizable provincial grants”
That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
Get Woke, Go Broke.
Why do “entrepreneurs” refuse to learn that lesson?
My guess: limited liability.
It’s easy to be woke if the firm’s creditors won’t be repossessing YOUR house or car or demanding YOU go to prison because YOU defrauded them.
I guess the project just ran out of gas …
yah Buddy, Alberta gas, AKA equalization payments:-)))
“… wondering how the brainchild of serial entrepreneur and tech millionaire Alexandre Taillefer failed, despite benefiting from sizable provincial grants and support …”
It failed because it qualified for sizable provincial grants and support. If it didn’t need those, it would have been successful. If it did need them and didn’t get them, it wouldn’t have gotten started so it couldn’t have failed.
Good!
“serial entrepreneur” is that code for serial bankrupt? #LearnToCode
tech millionaire Alexandre Taillefer Well, I am curious about those “tech millions”
Maybe it’s just me, but I keep imagining how many more coal and/or gas powered plants will need to reopen in order to provide enough electricity to charge up the millions of electric cars, trucks and ‘airplanes’. And that is not to mention ships at sea, that are being foisted upon a slack-jawed nation of NPCs right here in the Great White North … soon to be a lot browner and a lot less Great.
“The Green movement is standing inside a bucket trying to life itself up with the handle.” – Stolen Quote.