Budget-friendly uberX hits Cape Town with free rides for the long weekend

Alright Capetonians, no more complaints about Toyota Corollas and Avanzas picking you up when you order an UberBlack. Yup, the luxury car ordering service is relegating the “not so luxury” cars into its X range, which launched in Cape Town today.

Uber’s Cape Town team has been hinting at including the low-cost option into its service offering for some time now.

“We are thrilled to launch uberX in Cape Town today. This new service means that you can now enjoy the seamlessness, efficiency and safety of Uber at an extremely affordable price,” sais Anthony le Roux, General Manager for Uber Cape Town.

“This service will revolutionise the way Capetonians go about their daily lives. Our vision is that uberX will be so affordable and efficient that the need for car ownership in the city will soon become a thing of the past.”

To test out the new service, Uber gave musical group Goldfish the very first ride in a uberX in Cape Town this morning. This launch also kicks off the long weekend, where new and existing users can enjoy FREE uberX rides from now until 11pm on Monday 16 June.

UberX pricing will be as follows: Base fare will be R5, minimum fare at R20, fare per km will be R7 and fare per minute come in at R0.70.

The service also notes that riders will still be able to see their driver’s photo, name, registration and rating the moment their request is made, and will have access to a live GPS-enabled map throughout their journey.

This is quite the week for the cab-ordering service. It caused stirs in London with the launch of UberTaxi yesterday, which saw London uptake on the app increase more than 800%. The launch did come with some controversy as it came on the same day as slated protests in London against the service by existing cab drivers. The service caused a gridlock in several European cities as cab drivers took to the streets in a go-slow protest against the service yesterday.

Users can take advantage of the free period, by entering the promocode UBERXCT when they sign up or log in.