There is a price estimator on this site. It covers thirty routes out of Zurich Airport and it returns a figure instantly. So the honest version of this article is narrower than the title suggests: most journeys are arithmetic, and we automate the arithmetic. It is the other ones that go to a person, and it is worth saying which and why.
What a machine can price
A known route to a known class. Distance multiplied by the published rate — CHF 6.486 per kilometre for Business, the Van and the electric car, CHF 7.567 for Premium and SUV — floored at the class minimum. Zürich city is thirteen kilometres, which falls under the minimum, so it prices at CHF 129.72 rather than at eighty-four. That is a rule, and rules belong in software.
What it cannot
Kitzbühel, Salzburg, Wien, Frankfurt, Chamonix, Courchevel and Cortina are deliberately absent from that table. Not because we will not drive them — we will — but because the kilometre tariff stops describing them. Past a certain distance a journey acquires driver rest, a possible second chauffeur, an overnight, tolls, vignettes and a return leg that may or may not be empty. Multiplying the distance by 6.486 would produce a number. It would not produce a fare either party should sign.
Dynamic pricing solves the supplier’s problem
Surge pricing is a fine instrument for allocating scarce cars across thousands of anonymous requests. It works by moving the price after the demand is known.
Our clients need the number before the demand is known. A travel manager approving a quarter of transfers, a family office signing off a season, an assistant booking a board day in November — none of them can work with a figure that will be discovered on the morning. A rate that moves is not a rate. It is a range with good manners.
What the hand adds
- The question nobody asked: seven passengers and skis is a van, not two saloons.
- Two stops that make one journey cheaper than the two bookings you were about to make.
- Whether the electric car actually reaches the destination on the charge.
- A cross-border leg quoted with tolls, night hours and driver rest already inside it.
Written quotes come back within two hours on working days, and a confirmation inside fifteen minutes. That is slower than an app and faster than a procurement cycle, which is the speed the work actually runs at. An instant price you cannot rely on is not faster than a considered one you can.