Summon (originally InstantCab) was a

vehicle for hire A vehicle for hire is a vehicle providing private transport or shared transport for a fee, in which passengers are generally free to choose their points or approximate points of origin and destination, unlike public transport, and which t ...

company operating in portions of

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. The company was shut down in November 2014. Customers were able to pay with

Google Wallet Google Wallet (or simply Wallet) is a digital wallet platform developed by Google. It is available for the Android, Wear OS, and Fitbit OS operating systems, and was announced on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. It began rollin ...

History

The idea for Summon came after Aarjav Trivedi, its CEO and Founder, waited for over an hour for a bus and then a cab to take him to the airport. He missed an international flight because both were late. Trivedi created InstantCab (later rebranded as Summon) to give people a simple, fast, reliable, and inexpensive form of transportation. Previously, Trivedi founded RideCell which focused on fleet automation to making on-demand transportation fleets easier to manage and access. Summon was selected to participate in the Winter 2012

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

meet. Summon received funding in 2012 from venture capital and angel investors in Silicon Valley including Khosla Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz, Facebook Ex-COO Owen Van Natta and Delicious founder Joshua Schachter. In February 2014, after rebranding from InstantCab to Summon, the company raised another round of funding from existing investors and new investors such as BMW Ventures. The company pioneered many firsts, including being the first one to enable Drivers without cars to access fleet vehicles from Leasing and Rental companies (BMW's DriveNow carsharing service), the first one to use Electric Cars (also from DriveNow), to enable access to health insurance for ridesharing drivers, to offer drivers extra pay to transport disabled passengers., to feature women drivers ., and to offer drivers same-day deposits and a swiper with low credit card fees. In 2016, Summon pivoted to empower mobility leaders using the internal platform they had built as an intelligent "operating system" for leasing, automotive finance & mobility businesses. Their customers include Merchants Fleet,

BMW Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, trading as BMW Group (commonly abbreviated to BMW (), sometimes anglicised as Bavarian Motor Works), is a German multinational manufacturer of vehicles and motorcycles headquartered in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Th ...

, Arval by BNP Paribas, and

Toyota is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturer headquartered in Toyota City, Aichi, Japan. It was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda and incorporated on August 28, 1937. Toyota is the List of manuf ...

Drivers

Taxi drivers were able to sign up to drive for Summon. Taxi drivers were able to get a credit card swiper from Summon for use with street hails or non-Summon customers.

Surge pricing

Summon opposed a

dynamic pricing Dynamic pricing, also referred to as surge pricing, demand pricing, or time-based pricing, and variable pricing, is a revenue management pricing strategy in which businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market de ...

model. Instead of surge pricing, Summon used flat fares on busy times and event days. In addition, it offers a FareBack program, which gives customers a portion of their ride cost back as credits to use on future Summon rides.

Regulatory issues

On March 8, 2013, Summon received a

cease and desist A cease and desist letter is a document sent by one party, often a business, to warn another party that they believe the other party is committing an unlawful act, such as copyright infringement, and that they will take legal action if the oth ...

letter from

San Francisco International Airport San Francisco International Airport is the primary international airport for the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. Owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco, the airport has a San Francisco mailing ...

, claiming that its community drivers were

trespassing Trespass to land, also called trespass to realty or trespass to real property, or sometimes simply trespass, is a common law tort or a crime that is committed when an individual or the object of an individual intentionally (or, in Australia, ...

by unlawfully conducting business operations on airport property without a permit. Summon responded that its personal drivers were complying with the law because they were not picking up customers at the airport or engaging in commercial activities on airport property. Other

companies operating in San Francisco also received similar cease and desist letters from

. In September 2013, the

California Public Utilities Commission The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC or PUC) is a regulatory agency that regulates privately owned public utilities in the state of California, including electric power, telecommunications, natural gas and water companies. In addition ...

legalized

companies. Summon was the first

ridesharing company A ridesharing company (or ridehailing service) is a company (or service offered by a company) that, via websites and mobile apps, matches passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire that, unlike taxis, cannot legally be hailed from the street. ...

to receive its operating permit from the

, which it received on February 24, 2014.

References

{{Reflist, 1 2012 establishments in California Defunct transportation companies of the United States Transport companies disestablished in 2014 Defunct companies based in California Transportation companies based in California