 So did you just arrive today? Last night. Last night. We were in Hong Kong, Tokyo. So, well, it's not current, it's formality. Formality still has its place correct? Yeah. So we're recording this. Yeah. Okay, cool. So with your permission here right now. How are you finding your time in government? It's been more or less the same. I've been working as a kind of advisor for the previous cabinet, but also regarding government. So for me, it's mostly just the cabinet telling me to not focus any other time as a Apple consultant or as some other valley companies and dedicate full time to their public service. So it's been doing more or less the same like this, what we call government. Hence the record? Hence the record, yeah. Because it's a closed door meeting as you requested, but then we would want the other ministries who are actually in charge of related policy making and my role in this government as a channel so that other ministries who put it first in our meetings still have the same information, et cetera. I'm curious. So what area specifically are you spending your time on? Well, my three mandates are open government and then social enterprises and then what we call a use console, which our account use console, yeah. And that's it. And so with open government, I spend my time working on the output side, which is like open source, open API, open data, which as I understand, there's the U.S. digital service, also there's a lot of the same thing. Just to date, they launched Code.gov, which is something that we very much are inspired by the White House, there's this mandate that all the ministry has to open source 20% of all their code, so this is something that we will want to do that on. And also the civil participation side, which is the input side, so we're involved in multistakeholder meetings in civil participation, participatory budgeting, and things like that. No, the data efforts have been terrific, I think. I'm just getting more tech talent not to make this sort of occur in government until probably a few years or something. So we're both on data, but also the user experience, right, to make this interaction in government as consistent as it is with the best private sector. I think we're going to call it one way, we're going to call it trust. Yeah, the idea is that the government should focus on providing services in form of APIs if necessary, and then the private sector and the civil society can design the best user experience. Right. They want using the API provided by the government. At a previous century, it's usually the front end and the back end are built together. And so it's strongly coupled and people can really change that and know we're trying to move to it so it's sort of a coupled activity. Well, I'm curious, I mean, jumping into kind of how you see, I guess, ridesharing specifically in some of the debates in government and how that relates to, obviously, the government's very clear that they want to have Taiwan be a good return to Silicon Valley to the West and really be a place of innovation. So how do you see some of the debates around ridesharing and the technology aspects of that, how would they see the government broader goals and ambitions? Well, we're not trying to be the Silicon Valley at the West. There is the Silicon Valley in the West and that's the Silicon Valley. I'm sorry, Silicon Valley in Asia. It's my lack of money. It's fine. But still, we're not trying to be a Silicon Valley of Asia. The plan we had was what we call Asia, connecting to Silicon Valley. So Taiwan is like a connector that links with Asia and connects with the Silicon Valley. We're not trying to shanjai or to copy the Silicon Valley or be a copy of Silicon Valley. I think it's unique. I mean, until five weeks ago I'm still working with the Silicon Valley. Where were you living when you were out there running? I'm mostly based in Taipei. I've visited the valley from time to time but I'm always based in Taiwan. So I'm telecommuting full time. So, in any case, the idea was to be a connection, a connector at home, if you will. And one of the many hubs, really, that links the other hubs in Asia. There's many, right? There's Singapore, there's Hong Kong, there's Korea, just to build a stronger link. So we're not trying to be the Silicon Valley but we do want to connect the talents, the regulatory framework, and everything so that we can connect better with our peers in the Silicon Valley. So that's the main vision. So by sharing, incidentally, it's not part of the Asia connecting to the Silicon Valley client. Because for this plan in particular we are focusing more on the deregulation or regulatory normalization. And there's, of course, from the Silicon Valley side there's the mass of the digital tourism and then also in terms of neutrality, those are very interesting things that we need to work on. And on the Asian context, we also have our original APEC privacy framework and also the EU side of the privacy framework and we need to work on that as well. Right sharing. That's not yet came up on the agenda of the Asia talks, the Silicon Valley client. That's what it is. Well, we love it to be. And just, if I could give you the elevator there, so obviously, we're technology companies here or technology here in Taipei and elsewhere is basically creating economic activity on the ground in cities over on the rival side. So people are in a different way to get around and ultimately more forward. That doesn't compete with I know the debate here in Taiwan in a lot of places. It starts with sort of the old way taxing versus right sharing. But every piece of data we see around the world suggests that the minority flows and there's some competition for the taxing market. But we don't really talk about the taxing market in our company. We talk about the personal powers market and how to get people to turn forward. So then obviously on the driver's side it's creating a lot of economic opportunity here. So our hope would be that as many countries around the world have found a new regulatory framework in the braces we're sharing. Because I think it's important, obviously, I imagine part of the roadmap here is autonomous transportation, making cities congestion free and emissions free. And I think this stage is pretty important in getting people used to sharing cars. Which is two or three people on the road. Also on two green flying cars. Well, eventually. Right. Our viewers, let's look at every way to make our cities more local. But I think that this is a really important bridge to that autonomous future. Maybe flying cars. And so in understanding that the way you regulate that as every law on the world has understands some of the differences between right sharing and how we traditionally provide for higher transportation. And that basically the market's going to grow. The way people get around cities changes. And we're growing the pie. We're not dividing the pie. And again, I think that it sends the message of being friendly towards innovation. Understanding that this device is so powerful. But it's creating a tremendous amount of work. In our case, also changing the way people get around. And it's really interesting because it's not, our text is not living in a cloud monetizing from above. So much of the economic activity is staying on the ground here and improving people's lives. So, again, I hope that as you guys think through how to regulate right sharing. Obviously to look at what other countries have done will be some extinction here. But we are really concerned with the reports. Are they thinking about doing astronomical finds for people just who are driving their own car trying to make a little extra money? And I think that would be a really damaging signal to send, but also a terrible thing for those people who are in their retirees, the teachers, they're entrepreneurs who are trying to make a little extra money. So, hopefully, I won't be passing. Our hope is we can figure out the regulatory situation. So we can sit down and be in development and say, okay, let's think about mobility, transportation, for retirees, for women. Those tend to be the conversations we're having with government right now. I mean, those places once we get through these sort of poor regulatory questions and they're not that complicated. I mean, at the end of the day, how to regulate right sharing is pretty much a known thing now. And, you know, they're just the normal issues that we have to work with. Right, so to very quickly recap, a year ago I was helping to facilitate this discussion here. I mean, detail on platform, just about exactly the regulatory structure that you talk about. We had thousands of participants. We were drivers, we were ex-drivers, and also traditional taxi drivers. But also people who are not yet drivers for any one-site, they just want to think deliberate about this topic together. And then we had, of course, a lot of division of ideas, but because we employ a takes-the-principle component of everybody's ideas and presented in an easy to understand to dimensional form. So people still arrive at some consensus, something very strong, like 95% consensus. And then we made the regulatory structure based on people's broad consensus, even among people who are divisive. Right, so one of the consensus was basically taking Uber as a source of inspiration, I think that it is true that we have a way to hail taxis that does not, you know, depend on the car having any yellow paintings or any medallions or any other markers. It really is a new way to, you know, to call car. That's true. And then the other innovation that Uber brings is this 5-star system that lets both not just the passengers, but also the drivers who can also have a reputation for the clients. And so I think these are something that are very inspirational and that we do want to learn from. So just last month, actually we passed this, what we call the e-taxi regulation, our more formally taxidic diversification regulator structure so that any component who just want to introduce this kind of non-painting, yellow, non-medallion fleet can apply to administrative transportation and also just exactly really like Uber with this 5-star and the app that shows the whole license plate number and then the driver's name and so on so that everybody has a transparency and record of what exactly goes where. So I mean, I thank you for bringing the inspiration and I do agree that it is the consensus regardless of who they're working from that we do have a real infrastructure for this and now we do have. So of course if Uber and it's willing to register it's one of the fleets that would be prevalent. But we're not a tax company and no one regulates that way in the entire work. So we are a tech company and the transportation that's provided, you know, criminal and driving checks on the drivers, insurance, vehicle requirements, all that's part of the regulations we're handling but understanding the other advancement is not just the rate system, it's the rates happening on the track, full GPS tracking. Yeah, these are our regulations. Right, but again, to suggest that we should register as a taxi company is not the way it's been done anywhere else in the world and it will create too high barriers to entry. Someone who just wants to drive their own Toyota Prius for four weeks ought to be able to do that normally as long as they go through the right checks and I think that's really the tension here is trying to, and I appreciate that you guys have looked at this and made some adjustments but trying to figure out how to shoehorn what we do into old taxi regulations that has never been in our view a good outcome or a satisfying discussion. It's more about how do we fashion new regulations and by the way, a lot of people have looked at how to deregulate things from the taxi industry. There's only question whether it's giving them more supply flexibility or pricing flexibility. There's a lot of things that we think make sense and it's ought to be opened up and barriers to entry are reduced. We also put the end of search press into the regulations, so we really took everything that we did but again, to basically say again, a teacher or a retiree, someone should go through a tremendous amount of routes to drive their own car for a few hours a week, that's where the tension is. I mean, they just take, I don't know, four hours to get a professional driver's license is not that much because I don't know, a few not, I think less than 100, I don't know, US dollars so this is not a huge or tremendous amount and indeed, there's nothing in our new regulation that says they must drive full time or they must drive exclusively in business hours or anything like that so I still fail to appreciate where is the whoops. Well, no, I think getting a professional driver's license I think registering is a taxi company and these things I think are even consistent with where you see platforms like Uber and it's not just Uber, they're the other ridesharing companies ecosystems emerge around it that really are interesting and I think part of I think creating even a stronger entrepreneurial fund soon so I think that's where the issue is and we're happy to share some ideas with you and more specifically about what we'd like to see here that would enable what we do really to flourish and have this threat of my understanding is it's close to a million US dollars fine for drivers which is for the opinion of professional license, yes. That's not from a proportional standpoint there's nothing like it in the world the most extreme situation in the entire world that we've ever seen. I think with that I'll let it down from the finance which it was started after so differential I think it's slightly higher, maybe 10% higher No, but in France we have a very good business in France but again it makes it harder for someone who's just looking to augment their income and you have all the safety requirements involved, we're not suggesting that this perception that we don't want to be regulated for many places around the world and believe that's appropriate. Right, so the main convention I would put it is just to obtain professional driver's license. You would like drivers to not obtain professional driver's license because it costs too much. Well I think for someone again who's just looking they're not going to make this a career they may even be doing it just for a period of time you know in summertime all over the world people just drive for a few weeks in December rather than holidays so that we are as we do elsewhere you know criminal checks, driver's checks, insurance checks the vehicle requirements, all things that we think are appropriate but that the notion of someone having to then commit to become a professional driver go to different government offices that's something that generally we see is it indeterrent and again our view is citizens going out and making a little bit of extra money you know while you're still insuring public safety it's a wonderful thing I mean most people are all over the world not as sad as always they'd like to be with their income situation and in some cases they just need a little bit more whether that's over a period of time or whether it's episodically and so that's where our philosophy comes in and it's a very strong principle that there's ways to do the regulations like taking things like insurance things like vehicle requirements but that have lower barriers to entry so that people are able to really without taking a long time you know within a week they get over it yeah I mean I'm not administrative transport but from what I've been personally through to obtain a driver's license it's really not more than a week's time there is one exam I think and then one written exam that's about it it's not a a requirement to be a professional driver it's not a requirement for we call them taxi drivers a free occupation that's mean you don't have to be a full-time driver you really don't have to you let yourself a certification as you have less right it's just starting to find out that you have more skill than a non-professional driver it's a skill based examination understanding the duties and responsibilities and then as a professional driver and that's not a very high barrier of entry personally speaking but if it is and if it does cause a problem of course the Ministry of Transport can look into stringing lines in the process but from my personal experience it's just involved going into one single office of the Ministry of Transport it's not like in multiple government agencies so if that's the only barrier just preventing the current driver's license I'm sure that we can streamline the process well just I think I appreciate that sentiment and we look forward to more discussion about that I think that's important because the model is really based on the ability and again I did driving something most of us can do and the technology has made it easier for someone to turn on the phone turn on the car and make a little bit of money and so what we see is there's plenty of people who only want our platform to work for people you know what this is how I'm going to spend this is going to be my major source of income they certainly want to work for drivers like that and partners but the real growth comes from people who are just doing this in a very supplemental way and understanding that there's ways to provide regulations that I think you know give the public confidence and public safety but also understanding that to have somebody who could be making additional money for a period of time not able to do that personal tragedy for them and their lives would be improved the other thing is you want to and I know this can sometimes count on intuitive but the larger ride sharing gets the better effect you're going to have in terms of reducing congestion because no matter where somebody is in the rare type A area they know they're going to get a partner for them and when they know that's the case they use their partners and ultimately we don't have parking but that's I think the big public policy is convincing people now not just to use their car but they're willing to share a ride with somebody using technology that's the flight you want if through barriers of entry you're limiting the supply it's not just that they're denying people the opportunity to make money the whole system kind of falls apart there is already rare sharing communities to universities and so on and so far there's been no for-profit operators because the law was not allowing app-based car dispatch but now it's the new regulation that was just passed last month we're now taking applications so we are now basically saying okay these are the professional drivers who as we said maybe they're riding on the street and then contributing to congestion because there's no planned algorithms to make that efficient and we also have local technological companies who are willing to work with these fleets to make these leads that serves those areas that has a lot of congestion and that's already happened as of a couple weeks ago we're now taking our first batch applications so we do want to make the roads congestion free more autonomous or semi-autonomous so I thought that I think your auto trench the long haul what we call software defined rails will probably happen first because that's easier and contributes more to the carbon neutral footprints of the whole traffic industry but I mean all this we agree in principle and we are already contributing to that bringing out a way to remove this threat of massive fines on drivers so we're just citizens trying to make a little money but also the notion we are a technology company and again we believe that the transportation that's provided there's a smart way of regulating that but to really enable this to flourish because again UberPool is something that only works when you've got enough liquidity in using technology and in some of our major cities now 50% of the people who use Uber are not getting in the backseat by themselves particularly the younger generation so you've used it in Paris I've used it in Paris it's great because I think really since the early 70s we've talked about how it's a global community we can encourage carpool on scale and it's never really worked there's casual carpools as you mentioned but we're starting to see on scale a pretty big behavior change around people's willingness to share rides and with technology you're only in convenience they get a half price ride and you know most of our drivers tend to gravitate towards school and eventually there's all the electric and again so that's important I think that bridge is important to autonomy because the autonomous future is going to rely on obviously technology being close to perfect the regulatory structure being in place infrastructure changes but it also is going to be able to be the behavior of people that they're comfortable doing that and again that's where we think we're going to go Yeah sure, I mean I agree 100% I think we're bringing a while of agreement here Except on the details because I think that what you're talking about I don't think it's consistent with rideshare and being able to flourish and so what I like to do is get back to you with some specific suggestions My main agenda is just to listen through your side of the story it's completely possible that currently you were comparing a driver a part-time driver maybe applying to Uber for the background checks for everything right and getting a Uber driver's license for a later better term Well they have a driver's license obviously Can you drive a check? Yeah, and 4.5 stars and then we're comparing it to applying to a local authority of the Ministry of Transport to go through a very similar background checks and criminal records and then pass a written exam about the responsibility of professional drivers I'm saying it's comfortable but you're saying that it's not so I would like to hear more Right, well our evidence suggests that things like written exams again in the year 2016 with technology going to low-end offices I think recognizing that you can accomplish the same things using technology in the more streamlined process that's again based on a lot of experience about someone who's just looking to do this in very part-time capacity and maybe for a short period of time is willing to do it's a different set of requirements I think when someone, although I think I think it's a good opportunity to look at what can you do right away for the tax industry to give them or maybe price flexibility some life flexibility and I think generally this is good for drivers meaning most of the people who drive a new platform or just have their citizens they're not professional drivers but for professional drivers now where it's taxi, limbo, or truck the nice thing is now they have another option so it's not just choice for consumers who ride it's choice for consumers who ride Yeah sure, when I was in Paris one of the cars that I went into I wouldn't even call it a Uber car because they have like five different smartphones on the dashboard and so it does give a driver more choice I do agree with that Well that's a great point because I think for really ride sharing and floor sharing what you'll find is that those drivers will have our app another ride share again about two delivery apps whoever has worked for them at the moment and so it's not an exclusive arrangement they're not necessarily doing themselves as a professional driver they're just using their app and their phone and delivering their money some of that delivering people, some of them delivering goods we know we're doing food delivery in many places So this goes back to the open API idea because if we do have an open API of all the ride sharing dispatches of food delivery and everything then we can aggregate it So you're saying if you want the government to basically be the not anyone but again I think that that sense of I guess the terms multi-appen but that sense of making it even easier for people to make money on their schedule is incredibly important that a regulatory structure supports that at the foundation without providing the right kind of regulations and again I think what we see here is you know it is basically maybe some adjustments but it's basically drafting some things onto existing taxi regulations and again we haven't seen in the rest of the world that work what's worked is brand new regulations that understand what ride sharing is and what isn't but again we're not suggesting we should not be regulatory we think smart regulation is a lot of sense and you know we've got a lot of different obviously Taiwanese as we need but you know we've got a lot of good examples about other countries in the region and elsewhere we did look at all of it last year when we were making this little deliberation about what we call the private for profit because it's at the end of the day as you said it's making some more money so it is for profit otherwise it's just a community profit that's right but I think that's what is required for people engaging the activity because they're obviously want to make a little money on their schedule but the societal benefits that come out of that are pretty incredible we're starting to really change the way I think we think about moving around our cities and they don't use us for everything they use it to fill in gaps and so it's three or four times a month that's it but it was three or four times a month wherever they are in the city they can press a button and get a ride and use it in conjunction with public transportation taxes but what we do is unique I do agree it's making the pie larger so to speak and it is providing people who wouldn't normally be conveniently calling the tax to participate in transportation and so they wouldn't have to drive their own car and things like that I agree 100% and this is something that we can streamline I don't think it's paper based nowadays to take a written exam but as a written that just means written so it can be like this written but I think our main difference still lies in the view of the regulation in the previous laws which you described as drafting it onto an existing law which as far as I understand of course I wasn't an instructor of transportation but I did participate in the initial sketch of the regulation it is in our idea just a new section and it's not shared with the existing taxis the whole idea is not to convert existing taxis or existing fleets it's to set up a different free that doesn't have a medallion that doesn't paint yellow and it's exclusively app based and we almost say that it has to be paid exclusively through e-payment but I mean we have a sunrise period like for the initial a year or two they can still take cash but eventually they will all switch to e-payment which gives them I mean I can make your case also I do agree on a lot of principles so whether or not Uber wants to web with one of the fleets who did register and becoming a technological supplier like you did in China emailings I believe or you want to enrich the whole company it's your choice of course that's kind of a fleet approach as opposed to individuals just using that's where the watchers don't fleet that's where some of the attention so as we look at it we just don't think what's on the books here and this threat of a massive fight on individuals is consistent with the really scaling it's not just for us but for others so if it's okay I'd love to give back to you a little bit more detail about kind of the arbitrage between what's existing and the issues but again I think that sense of fleets, taxi companies has never been part of the regulations that have really worked well that have really allowed rock sharing to flourish and then the ecosystem around it so we appreciate your perspective which is you understand the value of this but sometimes there's a difference between because the devil is in the details and sometimes very small things that may seem not terribly intrusive really in our evidence based history suggests that we just won't be able to see the scale that you're looking for and so I think we have violent agreement I think about the shared goals I think the means to allow this to happen are still some things we have to work through right so you mentioned fleet size and you mentioned the appliance I think there is no restriction of the minimum size of the fleet in our new taxi regulation it could be just five cars and designing to categorize them on themselves but of course I do agree that and the critical mass in a certain region is important so of course we do want to work with regional cities to set up like fleets designed for the night time maybe for special needs and maybe for elderly and things like that like special service fleets which is why we call them fleets but they are really just individual past professional driver's license and want to serve that particular public cost so and again I don't really know which of these models would work but we have changed the pricing structure so they can charge more and even our surge pricing and so we think there are some incentives for them to participate in this kind of new fleet and so this is refined I think this is not something that the administration has proposed if I actually correctly it's the front legislative side and I'm not in connection with that which is later so I just read public information as we did but the public information says that it's to be charged proportional to the capital of the fleet company size so which is why I think the press called it anti-regulate well because you do have a market cap that is huge so it's proportional in the sense of right so but I think rather than putting on historically large funds on individuals let's find a way to craft regulations that work for our shared goals and normability solutions and ride share on the floor again this is not that complex of a nation it's something I think but again the principle of making it easy for individuals not thinking about this from a taxing fleet perspective is really I think what is required to have all the benefits that flow from large well then we all agree say do you have other suggestions to the details of how we're contributing then we can talk about it here or we can call that well I think what I'd like to reflect on this conversation and whether it's a follow up call or we put some thoughts on paper you know here's kind of what we see in the e-taxi proposal here's where the tension is and some suggestions for how to move forward so that you know I think there's Taipei is going to be such and really the entire country is such a great I think an example of how ride sharing can really help when you think about you know the government bulls stronger economic growth I'm surprised I mean six years ago we thought we'd be here in Taipei talking about ride sharing can be a pretty important economic growth engine but also from a mobility standpoint as it turns out there was huge gaps in our transportation ecosystem I certainly didn't have a full appreciation for it to give you see the service really explode and you see how it's changing in some way how people move around and you know millennials if they have their choice we'd rather not drive this next generation so we have to have enough transportation options I think to support those desires and then what you get out of that is obviously what we all want which is fewer cars on the road and those on the road have more people and as many as possibly emissions free or you know better for the environment but I appreciate your time it's helpful to hear your perspective on this I hope that we can figure out a solution that works for the government so that's generally what we're seeing around the world is this is not a this is not a divide that came from the bridge well I mean I'm more as a technical interested in this automotive driving you know local trucks and really the flying cars the project elevators that you're bringing in but these things have a distinctly different thing as you just described we don't have people who drive helicopters for fun the hours are a few minutes during your business it has to be something professional there really is no question around that and then for professional truck drivers we of course established an even more strict regulatory structure and we're not saying that people can just hop on a random truck and drive them home as amateurs as just anybody can drive a truck I don't think that's true and even for automated truck driving you still have to have the local part of it right once they finish the highway there has to be somebody who have to work the car out the technology is more for the longer stretches right so at least for the next I would say 5 to 10 years we have to work on the way to switch from autopilot to the local thing and then again I wouldn't really trust it to a random person who just want to drive a truck for fun even though they may have an amateur driver's license right so I think that's right but I think there's a big distinction between that and someone getting an amateur driver's license who may be a teacher or a student or a small business person I'm going to make a little bit of money for a period of time right exactly so what I'm saying is that there are some distinctions I think right so what I'm saying is that in the long term like emission free and so on go but your next steps that's more robotic based I do agree and I think we can come with your structures to make that happen but in that future it is actually the habit that you're now building in the sense it's actually counterproductive to the future of your describing because at that time we will need another professional policy that can be interfaced between the robots and the public but I do think this period so just in terms of passenger transportation to get people more used to not buying their own cars not using as much sharing transportation getting used to carpool that's clearly going to be an important visual to auto but then according to your plan then you will still need them to get professional licenses as either robotic operators or augmented pilots at that time well we'll see I don't know if that's really the part I think flying cars are different than autonomous cars on our service streets so maybe they will become guides or guided tour operators the future is going to be interesting what we know is right in front of us is let's make a ride share and work here in Taiwan sure all right minister I appreciate the time I'm very happy that we get to exchange candidly always better than an alternative yeah cheers okay and I do think that there is more more attention between taxing what we think is required so we will get back to you a little bit more specific should I talk to my other team here but do you understand that anything is done yeah of course of course okay I agree and that's what we want to do so as a technological vendor that will be great but as a technological vendor that works around the profession which I realize is required is something that we are comfortable with and according to our insistence on making this even though we are drivers and so of course these were well these were you know yeah generally okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay okay