Uber CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick was a guest on Stephen Colbert’s new Late Show this week and ran into a bit of drama as pro-taxi audience members heckled him during his interview.
Business Insider reported that on two separate occasions during the interview, the protestors stood up and yelled at Kalanick for eliminating taxi industry jobs.
The incidents did not make it to the final taping, but a Late Show employee detailed what happened on her Twitter feed.
Two separate times during the interview with Uber guy, some cabbies in the balcony yelled stuff and interrupted the conversation.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
They were criticizing Uber's disruption of the NYC cab system, and they were very aggressive and made everyone rather uncomfortable.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
I mean, I don't blame them, their argument is valid. But I initially thought it was a bit, but the crew started looking around frantically.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
Instead of having the men removed, Stephen acted with complete respect and control. He listened intently to what they had to say.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
When the guy finished, Stephen said that he was planning on asking a similar question, and politely asked the man to be seated.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
He then turned back to the interview and addressed exactly what the man had yelled about. It was very smooth. The whole thing was cut, tho.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
Then five minutes later, another man got up and yelled something else. The Uber guy started to talk back to him, but Stephen calmly touched
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
his arm and quieted both him and the cab driver in the balcony. He said that he would ask the man's question "in a more respectful way."
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
Then he again respectfully asked the man to sit down, and he asked exactly what the man had yelled about. Very, very smooth transition.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
It was incredible to see how well Stephen handled it all. Absolute class and respect, the whole time.
— sarah (@yourpal_sarah) September 11, 2015
The part that did make the final cut was Colbert’s question to Kalanick about Uber destroying “professional, good paying jobs” and taking down the taxi industry.
“Let’s take New York for example. Taxi drivers spent $40,000 to rent a car,” Kalanick responded. “That should be a Bentley you’re riding around in. Instead, it goes to a taxi owner who owns a license to own and operate a cab. In the Uber world, you can use your own car, you don’t pay $40,000 to rent a vehicle, you make more dollars per hour and it’s flexible — you don’t have a shift, you can turn on work when you want to and turn it off.”
Kalanick also answered questions about why Uber implements surge pricing and noted that during emergencies, “we basically turn it off.” That’s a decision Uber made following backlash during previous emergencies like the 2014 Sydney hostage crisis, when Uber was charging customers more than four times the normal rate before deciding to refund customers and offer free rides.
At the end of the interview, Colbert asked Kalanick about self-driving cars and what that could potentially mean for Uber drivers today.
“Well, look, Google is doing the driverless thing, Tesla is doing the driverless thing, Apple is doing the driverless thing — this is going to be the world,” Kalanick said. “The question for a tech company is, do you want to be part of the future or do you want to resist the future? We feel that, in many ways, we want to not be like the taxi industry before us. That’s how we think about it.”
Colbert asked a good mix of serious and more light questions — the funniest moment probably came when they discussed UberEATS, the food delivery service from Uber. Kalanick told Colbert how the food is prepared before someone orders it and sits in a driver’s vehicle until it is ordered.
“Wait, so someone makes a tuna sandwich, it goes into a glove compartment of a Buick, somebody drives around Manhattan until the smell is strong enough that people know to order?” Colbert said. “The food just sits in the back seat? You know, I could go for a casserole that’s been in the back seat of a Toyota.”
Kalanick reassured Colbert that the cars have temperature-controlled containers. You can watch the interview below, and make sure you check out Colbert’s chat with Tesla founder Elon Musk, too.