wong wei is a driver who uses an online car dispatch service. that, by changing to a foreign luxury car, he can register in higher paying categories. beijing has long suffered a shortage of taxis. the government has limited the number of taxis within beijing to about 60,000, since the 1990s. this made it almost impossible for locals to get a cab, partly due to the traffic jams. but the car dispatch services, which began in 2012, changed that dramatically. now more than 150,000 vehicles are registered with such services within beijing. wang starts working at 7:00 a.m., in line with the morning rush hour. taxi drivers have to know how to get passengers but wang doesn't need to worry about that. wang simply follows instructions from his app. this app detects in advance the customer's point of departure and arrival, and calculates the estimated fare. the actual fare is calculated by the gps that tracks the route taken by the car. upon arrival, passengers settle the payment on their smartphones. they can't get away without paying, because the app com