Uber: why the world’s biggest ride-sharing company has no drivers

Uber's carefully constructed public policy is designed to skirt regulations - so the person behind the wheel of your car is a 'partner' or even a 'customer'

At the beginning of last summer, Uber had about 80,000 regular drivers in the US. By the end of the season, it had none. The ride-sharing company had decided to call them "driver-partners" instead.

Driver-partners, according to an upbeat paper written by Uber's head of economic research in January, are workers who choose to provide car rides using the Uber platform. What they definitely aren't, the company claims, are Uber employees.