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Lyft adds in-app 911 and prominent license plates to its safety tools
Lyft is joining Uber in responding to the death of a college student with improved safety features. To begin with, it's adding an Uber-style option to call 911 from within the app -- if there's an emergency, you won't have to switch apps or lose track of your whereabouts. This should be available in the "coming weeks." Lyft will also require feedback for any rating under four stars, so it should be clearer when a driver's behavior is problematic.
Lyft also trying out PIN-based airport pickups in Portland
Lyft wants to speed up airport pickups with some changes to how it matches drivers. The rideshare company is debuting a PIN-based pickup feature at Portland International Airport today, with the plan of eventually expanding to other airports. Instead of waiting for the system to match them with a specific driver, Lyft riders join a designated line and receive a four-digit PIN they can use for the first available driver. Uber launched a similar feature today.
Uber's IPO went off amid outcry over labor conditions and wages
Uber's much-anticipated IPO happened this morning, with shares hitting the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol UBER. The IPO raised $8.1 billion, with shares set at $45 and the company valued at $82.4 billion. This comes amid outcry over Uber's low driver wages and a $1.1 billion profit loss in the first three months of 2019. According to The New York Times, the IPO was "less lofty" than expected.
Lyft just started experimenting with car rentals in San Francisco
Between offering on-demand rides and peppering cities with electric scooters, Lyft has been pushing hard to minimize the need to actually own a car. Now, the company is exploring yet another way to further those ambitions (and boost its bottom line after a turbulent IPO in the process). Engadget has learned that, as of this week, Lyft has begun to experiment with longer-term car rentals, offering them to a small group of customers in San Francisco.
Uber and Lyft drivers are striking over pay and job security
Ridesharing drivers for have acted on promises to go on strike over labor conditions. Workers for Uber, Lyft and other companies in 10 cities (including Chicago, New York City and LA) are staging actions to demand better pay and job security. The exact conditions vary from city to city, but there are common demands for minimum guaranteed pay, caps on the companies' fare portions and an end to sudden, opaque deactivations that leave drivers with few options to get their access back.
Waymo's self-driving vans will start picking up Lyft riders in Phoenix
Waymo and Lyft have clarified how their self-driving technology partnership will work in the short term. As an initial move, Lyft customers in the metro Phoenix area will have access to 10 Waymo vehicles in the next few months. You'll just have to pick the vehicle type from the Lyft app, much like you would with any other ride option. The move will both expand the reach of Waymo's fledgling self-driving operations and provide "valuable feedback."
Uber and Lyft stop accepting new drivers in NYC
Uber and Lyft have stopped hiring new drivers in New York City, due to a newly-passed law aimed to tamp down on an already oversaturated rideshare market. Politico reported that Uber stopped accepting new driver applications on April 1, with Lyft following suit on April 19th. The decision comes after the city put in place a new wage floor for rideshare drivers strongly opposed by both companies.
Lyft adds New York’s Citi Bikes to its app
Beginning in May, Lyft customers in New York City will be able to use Citi Bikes through the ridesharing app. Users won't need a separate account or login to locate or unlock the bikes. The Lyft app will automatically show how many bikes are available at nearby stations. When users are ready to ride, they'll receive a five-digit code, which they can enter in any dock at a given station to release the bike of their choice. Both of the services are popular on their own, so together, they could have a meaningful impact on transportation in New York.
Lyft will run ‘continuous’ background checks on its drivers
A lot can happen in a year, so it's probably wise that Lyft will no longer rely solely on annual background checks for its drivers. The ride-sharing company will now run daily criminal monitoring of its active drivers and will receive immediate notification of any disqualifying criminal convictions. Lyft will also keep a closer eye on identity fraud and will require drivers to carry both a license and an up-to-date photo of their face.
Uber files for its IPO and faces the past
Ten years after the company was founded, Uber is finally ready to go public. The company revealed its S-1 filing for an IPO this afternoon, and as such opened up more information to everyone about its finances and concerns going forward. Going through the document, a lot of those concerns involve the past, particularly in 2017 when a series of revelations about its corporate culture, treatment of drivers and passengers, and other misdeeds resulted in the exit of CEO Brian Kalanick. According to Uber, it has some 91 million monthly active users who've either taken a ride or received an Uber Eats delivery. That number came from Q4 of 2018, and is up 35 percent from the previous year, with some 3.9 million drivers, and 1.5 billion trips in the quarter. Uber also gave some insight on its self-driving car plans, saying "Along the way to a potential future autonomous vehicle world, we believe that there will be a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while Drivers continue to serve most consumer demand." As usual for an S-1, the list of risks acknowledges everything that could go wrong for the company including increased regulation, drop in reputation or falling behind competitors. For Uber that includes not just the seedier aspects of its past mentioned above, but also the issue of how to try and achieve profitability while maintaining prices customers have come to expect and compensation that works for drivers. This is expected to be one of the biggest tech IPOs ever, and comes just a month after its main competitor Lyft listed its shares on the open market, revealing over 30 million riders and just under two million drivers.
Open Curbs database could make it easier to catch an Uber
Curb data can be intensely useful to city planners and transportation companies alike, but it's usually fenced off. What if everyone had access to it? They will now. Alphabet spinoff Coord has launched Open Curbs, a public repository for curb info like parking signs, fire hydrants and other vital details. The information could help cities identify safe places for delivery and ride hailing stops, not to mention aid in urban planning as the transportation grid evolves.
Uber is expected to buy its Middle Eastern rival Careem
After years of backing out of major international markets, Uber appears ready to go on the offensive. Sources talking to Bloomberg claim the ridesharing firm is poised to buy Careem, its chief competitor in the Middle East, for the equivalent of $3.1 billion in cash and shares. It's not certain just what Uber would do with its acquisition. However, you might hear about it very shortly -- stakeholders have been asked to rubber stamp the deal by the evening of March 25th, and a deal could be made public as soon as March 26th.
Lyft officially files to go public
Lyft has revealed its financial details for the first time as it prepares for an initial public offering. Like rival Uber, it first filed the paperwork confidentially in December, and now its S-1 is public through the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lyft lost $911 million in 2018, but doubled revenue to $2.1 billion from 2017. It had $8.1 billion in bookings over the year, up from $4.6 billion in 2017. Lyft didn't state how much it's looking to raise in the IPO -- it left a placeholder figure of $100 million in the filing. It plans to go public on Nasdaq under the "LYFT" ticket symbol.
Uber's bike service is cutting into car rides
If you suspected that Uber's Jump bike sharing would be popular enough to cut into its mainstream car service, you suspected correctly. Jump has revealed that more than 63,000 customers in San Francisco have taken over 625,000 trips since a launch in the city in 2018, and that this popularity is affecting car rides in the area. While an initial study in July showed that bikes were starting to replace cars, Jump noted that the trend had "remained consistent" since then -- the more people relied on pedal power, the larger the decrease in car trips. That was particularly true for peak periods.
Uber adds public transportation options to its app
Uber is primarily thought of as a ridesharing service, but today the company is adding new transportation options to its app -- even though they don't involve the users actually taking an Uber ride. Denver's Regional Transportation District (RTA) has been added to the Uber app, which means that people searching for a ride will also see what public transportation options are nearby that can get them where they're going.
Lyft is suing over New York's minimum pay for drivers law
Lyft is planning to file a lawsuit today against the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) in an attempt to block a new law that would require ride-hailing guarantee a minimum wage floor for drivers. The company confirmed to Engadget that it is filing the suit Wednesday. Lesser known ridesharing service Juno is filing its own lawsuit over the matter.
Via ride-sharing connects LA passengers to three Metro stations
In an effort to entice residents to ride public transportation again, LA has launched a pilot program designed to shuttle residents to and from three of the busiest Metro stations in the city. LA's local government first announced its team-up with ride-sharing platform Via back in 2017. Now, the pilot is live and has started offering shared, on-demand rides to serve the Artesia, El Monte and North Hollywood stations.
Uber is hiring robotics teams to work on bikes and scooters
Uber is only gradually resuming its self-driving car program, but it's already thinking about expanding that technology to its two-wheeled services. The Telegraph has discovered that Uber is hiring for a "micromobility robotics" team that would bring "sensing and robotics technologies" to shared bikes and scooters. While the exact plans aren't clear, the newspaper believed this would lead to rides that park themselves -- important when carelessly parked scooters are a plague in some cities.
Take a look at Bell and Uber's flying taxi of the future
While Elon Musk's Boring Company hopes to ease traffic congestion by burrowing under the cities of tomorrow, Uber and Bell Aerospace are taking to the skies. At CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Bell revealed the latest iteration of its Nexus VTOL aircraft, which is being developed as the preferred platform for Uber's Elevate air taxi program.
Here's ride-hailing app focuses on shared rides
Most ride hailing apps are strictly focused on getting you from A to B. That's rather important, but they don't really acknowledge why you're going out -- you're heading to a party, a business meeting, a family get-together. Here Mobility thinks it can add that social element with its SoMo app. At its heart, it's a multi-service hailing app with group planning. You can create one-time or recurring events, invite people and help them find the best way to get around, whether it's a ridesharing car, a taxi or the bus.
