The G7 celebrated its 120th last yeare Anniversary. How to summarise the positioning of the made-in-France taxi in a few words?
Yann Ricordel – G7 is a taxi booking service. We have two types of customers: passengers and drivers, all of whom are self-employed. 40 % of our business relates to business travel. And 75 % of bookings are made via the mobile applications from G7, whose dedicated app for our subscribed customers. Our mission is twofold: to improve mobility for all our passenger customers, and to make the daily lives of affiliated taxi drivers easier.
Is this 40 % share of the business customer base stable?
Yann Ricordel – Yes, it’s stable. We’re the industry leader in the business customer sector, which has specific expectations when it comes to passenger transport: they’re looking for reliability, safety and the guarantee of a service that’s available at all times and throughout France. This is what we at G7 have been offering for years, and our business clients appreciate it: 96 % of decision-makers recommend the G7 subscription; 98 % of our clients are satisfied with safety on board; 97 % are satisfied with the drivers’ professionalism. These figures are constantly rising, because we invest heavily in the quality of our service.
Are you seeing new selection criteria emerge among business customers?
Yann Ricordel – Absolutely: for about two years now, we've been facing increasing demands regarding economic and digital sovereignty. On the first point, we have a unique advantage in our sector because we are one of the last Franco-French players, with all our teams based in France, including our call centres, and this has been the case for years. Digital sovereignty is naturally a more complex subject – an information system is complex – but we are investing to maximise the protection of our business clients' data, which is the most sensitive data. Our clients are questioning us on how we can protect it, particularly in the face of the Patriot Act. Their mobility data is very sensitive – client appointments, supplier appointments – and we are investing heavily to prevent this data from leaking. It is hosted in data centres that we own ourselves.
You announced new developments in AI at VivaTech. What changes can users expect?
Yann Ricordel – Our initial investment phase represents €20 million per year. AI serves our dual mission, for drivers and for passenger customers, with conversational agents for our passenger and driver customers. We have premiered AI-native taxi ordering tools integrated into WhatsApp and in callbots. In the coming weeks, we will be able to offer customers the ability to book their taxi using artificial intelligence, on WhatsApp or via a simple voice message. There is also the enhancement of predictive tools. We have presented a completely new activity prediction tool, intended for our internal supervision teams as well as our drivers, enriched by AI: it aggregates predictive data on business trends, very local weather, historical data, and local events (event departures, etc.), to better position drivers and continuously improve approach times – a key element for picking up the passenger as quickly as possible.
The other new development concerns the arrival of the G7 in Bordeaux…
Yann Ricordel – Absolutely. For our business clients, we have a network of 260 towns and cities in France, covering which we ensure a continuity of service for our subscribed customers. We have now decided to open up to Bordeaux orders to our retail customers. Why? To recreate a virtuous circle that we’re very familiar with in the Paris region: the more work we provide for our drivers, the more we increase their earnings, and the more we can improve the quality of service by having a greater presence on the ground, setting higher standards and raising our quality benchmarks. We launched about a week ago, and we’ve already doubled our business volume in Bordeaux. At present, just 1 % of our business is in the region. Our target is to reach around 15 to 20 %. It’s a brand-new venture: we’re starting with Bordeaux and plan to expand into other major cities next.
Which cities for example, and by when?
Yann Ricordel – It’s a bit too early to say. For the moment, things are going very well, both in terms of quantity and quality. We’ll adjust our schedule based on feedback from this first week in Bordeaux. That’s why we don’t want to commit to anything just yet, but we’ll be able to make these announcements at the end of the summer, with a more precise timetable for the next major cities. We know there’s a lot of anticipation for us — we can see it in the demand from our customers to ensure this continuity of service. For the moment, things are going very well, and we want to create this virtuous circle in our French regions too.
Why wait more than a century of existence for such a step?
Yann Ricordel – Technology both simplifies and complicates everything. It complicates things because we need to invest heavily and automate to handle millions of requests, with the inherent uncertainties of transport, all while ensuring a high level of personalisation for customers – particularly for our fare-paying passenger customers, who have a wide range of services. Today, we have reached a stage of technological maturity that allows us to operate this growth in the regions. Therefore, it is both very complex and, once the investments have been made, very simple to scale up.
What is your view on the competitive landscape? With the arrival of offerings such as Uber Taxi, isn’t it difficult to tell the difference between the various types of actor?
Yann Ricordel – Indeed, there is undoubtedly a temptation for some to confuse these services. Our positioning is very clear: we are the leader in taxis, dedicated to taxis. We champion the benefit, for society, for drivers, and for passengers, of having a regulated, structured, organised, and secure profession, with regulated fares. We are in favour of competition, competition that leaves choice: the choice of profession for the driver, the choice between different models for the passenger. We fully embrace being a little "monomaniacal", being the leader in this segment and wanting to remain so, not necessarily by being the biggest, but the best. Some competitors choose toto be "super apps", to offer everything. That’s not our choice at all. I understand that it can be confusing for passengers — we’re sometimes asked about the differences in status between taxis and private hire vehicles. It’s the same need: getting from A to B… But the methods are not at all the same, nor is the level of service. Drivers are not trained or selected in the same way, and do not have the same level of professional commitment. We maintain that a taxi is the best choice for the customer. After that, everyone is free to make their own choice.
How to stand out in this market?
Yann Ricordel – Competition is fierce; we're in a highly competitive, very tough market. We're getting by through premiumisation, by the quality of service offered to our loyal, long-standing subscriber clients, by our technological investments, and by capturing growth in the regions, also reaching customers sometimes forgotten by mobility services. For example, we are leaders for people with reduced mobility: we've tripled our fleet in two years for vehicles with wheelchair ramps. We're in high demand from companies' disability departments, and we're carrying two and a half times more passengers than we did three years ago. Employees with disabilities have a real need.
Are you planning to introduce new services aimed at business customers, particularly to manage travel policy effectively?
Yann Ricordel – Of course. In a somewhat complex economic climate, we are seeing corporate decision-makers paying closer attention to travel expenditure — with, no doubt, slightly fewer face-to-face meetings, and so on. Our tools for travel managers and procurement professionals are specifically designed to help them manage their expenditure: managing access rights, authorised zones and times, monitoring and reporting. We have completed a revamp of all these tools to provide the account administrator with a comprehensive overview of how G7 subscriptions are used by their staff, from the activation and transfer of access rights right through to management, reporting and carbon footprint analysis. This tool, which we have been working on for two years, will begin to be rolled out this summer via a trial involving around ten companies, before being rolled out more widely from the autumn onwards.
How is G7 progressing with the energy transition of its fleet?
Yann Ricordel – We have now exceeded 90 % hybrid vehicles. Two years ago, we committed to reaching 30 % fully electric vehicles by 2030, and we are well on track to meet this target. Today, we have 8 % of electric vehicles
Last year, the G7 launched a "Mobility Centre" at VivaTech, to envision the taxi of the future. Can you tell us more about it?
Yann Ricordel – The Mobility Centre is championing innovations and work carried out with the CNRS on data management and open-source AI. The Mobility Centre has practically travelled the globe to meet with autonomous car companies, with a view to launching trials with our drivers once the authorities permit, to test autonomous cars. We don’t have any official announcements yet, but things are progressing as they should.
You say "with drivers
Yann Ricordel – It's not that simple... That's precisely why we wanted to delve into it and experiment. Today, in cities where robotaxis operate, they return to their parking every two to three hours to be cleaned and have their charging managed by teams. There are safety issues, and the need for assistance for some passengers... The future is not entirely set regarding the extent to which humans will disappear in the face of autonomous taxis. We envision more of a hybrid model, with customers perhaps choosing between driverless vehicles, vehicles with a driver, or automated vehicles with a driver or attendant to assist them with their journey. Our drivers will have a role to play in this transition, in these experiments, but also, potentially, in the operation of these vehicles: there's a capital investment aspect. We are convinced that robotaxis deployed in cities without any oversight would represent a dystopia, with a risk of ecological and human disaster. Therefore, this deployment must be organised. Public authorities know how to do this: when self-service scooters were deployed in Paris, it took less than two years for the authorities to decide to regulate them. We can assume the same will happen for autonomous cars, and that all of this will eventually be organised. We are very familiar with this type of organisation, as taxis have stands and licences in cities. It seems logical to me that robotaxi licences could, in the long term, be issued to taxi drivers who already hold a licence. Discussions are underway on this subject; we are sharing our vision with public authorities, we want to experiment with drivers, and that is also the mission of the G7 Mobility Center.
