Uber unveiled this week a dramatic redesign to its app and website, as the $60 billion company continues to fight complaints from its drivers.
On Tuesday, Uber traded in its signature "U" logo for ones that CEO Travis Kalanick said were inspired by the tech building blocks of bits and atoms. The ride-hailing company, which has recently expanded into services like food delivery and is eyeing a future in self-driving cars, says the new look better represents its ambition.
"With the potential for many apps with many app icons, we needed one approach that connected them all," Kalanick wrote on the company's website. "So we came back to our story of bits and atoms."
Kalanick went into further detail in an interview with Wired:
"There’s an evolution here, for the founder as well as for the company,” he says, “because really, they’re very connected.” During Uber’s early years, Kalanick came across as a bellicose bro, a rebel-hero always angling for a confrontation—with regulators, the taxi industry, and competitors. Reflecting on this, Kalanick says it was all a misrepresentation by the media. When you don’t really know who you are, he says, it’s easy to be miscast—as a company, or as a person.
The San Francisco-based company is striving to be perceived as a kinder, gentler version of its old self. Yet it still struggles with many issues that bolstered its reputation for being an aggressively profit-driven company, even when it hurts consumers and workers.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected the company's attempt to freeze a class-action lawsuit representing more than 100,000 drivers in California who want to be recognized as employees, not contractors. The case, which could upend Uber's business model and affect its bottom line, is set to go to trial in June. (Uber's chief competitor, Lyft, settled a similar lawsuit by giving its drivers some workplace protections.)
As the trial looms, drivers are expressing their discontent in other ways -- particularly since Uber cut fares across the country, therefore cutting drivers' profits as well.
Hundreds of drivers in New York and San Francisco went on strike on Monday over the fare cuts, and many in the San Francisco Bay Area are reportedly planning to strike during Sunday's Super Bowl. The sporting event will be held at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, and Uber is an official partner for the game and related festivities. Drivers are planning to block freeways and other areas around the stadium, according to the Observer.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.