Uber Lights Up The Future With New Hailing Innovations

Uber, intent on ensuring some measure of visibility for its drivers, has unveiled plans for a couple of illuminating innovations.

Business Insider reports the ride-sharing app has won a patent for a light that would conceivably sit on top of cars, signaling potential passengers of their respective Uber rides.

The report explains what would be a rather captivating complement to the experience. Essentially, the light would lie atop the car and change colors depending on what the user chose in app at the time of booking.

Presumably, this would mean hailing a ride and then selecting blue or green or whatever color you consider your favorite to highlight your ride home.

The following tweet shares one of the telling diagrams:

Uber patented a light-up sign to go on top of cars - Business Insider https://t.co/8wreu2zLwJ pic.twitter.com/WYONXtY4Ii

— PatentCafe (@PatentCafe) January 4, 2017

As mentioned, Uber didn’t just think up this invention recently. The patent was looming around since May 2014 but just recently went to the ride-sharing behemoth on Tuesday of this week.

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While not a foregone conclusion, Uber had some other illuminating news to share via its blog last month.

It unveiled a contraption it calls beacon, which looks to sit casually on the windshield where the normal logo resides.

Like the technology promised above, the passenger gets to pick out a color for their ride before it gets there, making picking out their driver a veritable breeze.

The blog post states that, at first, availability will be scarce, popping up in cities like Miami, Denver, Nashville and Newcastle (United Kingdom).

It would be a nice novelty for users and, apparently, seamless for drivers. The post explains: “Drivers can install it themselves within minutes and then remove it in seconds. And with a powerful battery and Bluetooth connection to our driver app, it can last several evenings without charge, while keeping the dashboard cable-free.”

So, in time, hailing a ride won’t just be easy. It will be colorful as well.

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