Passengers hailing a Beijing taxi could soon find a few changes to their familiar ride.

Media reports say the city's taxies are to introduce electronic devices to detect fake banknotes and for passengers to evaluate the service.

Meanwhile, new taxi indicators are set to show more diversified information. In addition to the currently used "vacancy", the indicators will also project other messages such as "not in service", "on duty" and "telephone reserved".

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However, the new measures have met a lukewarm response from passengers and drivers.

"I'm not sure more indicator messages are going to be beneficial, because when you're looking for a cab it's either yes or no," said Elyssa Rae, 23, the events and marketing coordinator for Girls in Tech China. "I don't want to have to try and decode it every time."

William Heathershaw, the 24-year-old manager at dong-xi.com and vice-president of the International Newcomer's Network, is even more dismissive of the changes.

"If they don't pick me up, they don't pick me up. I don't need to know the reason," he said.

He also said, however, that it would be nice to be able to rate drivers in situations when they're noticeably good or bad.

He didn't think he would use the service regularly because it would be difficult for non-Chinese speakers to make an accurate judgment on whether or not the driver is good or bad.

"Many laowai don't speak Chinese terribly well, so a lot of times there's not that much interaction," he said.

For 25-year-old student Zhou Qin at Peking University, the changes are an insult. "It'll be really weird for drivers and passengers to check their money under the device while directly facing each other. It is sign of mutual distrust," she said.

Taxi drivers have been voicing their own concerns.

"In terms of setting up new devices, I'm truly curious to know whether we as drivers have to pay part of the costs," said 47-year-old Chen Qing. "I am also afraid taking our cars back for the modifications will take up too much business time."

Chen suggests that before introducing these changes, the local government solves some more urgent problems first, such as establishing an effective telephone reservation system.

"As far as I know, Beijing has more than 60,000 taxis which have been installed with dispatching devices designed for telephone reservation services, but only 10,000 have started that service," he said.

"And the available reservation services in the market are run separately and independently by three taxi companies."

Chen hopes that Beijing authorities can open up a hotline to incorporate all the city's taxis into a single reservation system.

"With that convenience provided to costumers, we won't have to drive empty cars so often."

Todd Balazovic contributed to this story.