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Lyft's international expansion begins this year in Toronto
Lyft started the year hoping to expand into 100 new cities. As of February, the ride-hailing company smashed through that goal and later added an additional 32 states to its coverage area. Today, Lyft announced it'd move into one more place before year's end: Toronto. This marks the first time the company has expanded beyond our domestic borders. Exact timing for when the service goes live isn't known at this point, according to the CBC.
Baidu teams with ride-hailing service to fast track self-driving cars
If Chinese search giant Baidu is going to fulfill its dreams of building a self-driving car platform, it needs maps accurate enough that vehicles can safely get from point A to point B. Thankfully, it has a solution: the company has just forged a partnership with the state-backed ride-hailing service Shouqi. Baidu will supply Shouqi with the tools it needs for both its existing business and driverless cars, including map services, its Apollo autonomous platform and its conversational AI platform DuerOS. In return, Shouqi will supply Baidu with high-precision maps.
Ford's on-demand van service is running again in San Francisco
The Ford-owned on-demand commuter van company, Chariot, paused its service in San Francisco last week to fix compliance issues with the California Highway Patrol. The CHP had found that some Chariot drivers did not have required Class B licenses. The company confirmed via email that "effective Monday afternoon, service will be back on and running as regularly scheduled."
Waymo ad campaign aims to get the public behind self-driving cars
Waymo announced today that it has created "the world's first public education campaign for fully self-driving cars." It's called the "Let's Talk Self-Driving" campaign and it aims to increase understanding of self-driving technology and convince would-be riders that it's safe.
Uber loses Europe chief amid London license denial
Uber's lead for Northern Europe, Jo Bertram, is leaving the company. The move comes less than two weeks after London's transport regulator, TfL, announced its decision to revoke Uber's private hire operator licence in the city. Should the decision be upheld, the company will be unable to operate in one of its largest and most lucrative European markets. Uber has filed an appeal and can operate while the appeal process is ongoing. Still, it's a setback for a company that has already changed its CEO this year and is struggling to recover from a long line of PR and corporate blunders.
Gett is using Citymapper data to plot new ride-sharing routes
London's public transport system is pretty robust, with plenty of Tubes, buses and overground lines zig-zagging across the city. At rush hour, though, squeezing onto a crammed DLR carriage can be a total nightmare. One alternative is a taxi-hailing app like Gett, which for some time now has been pushing Gett Together, a ride-sharing service that operates on preset routes across the city. Today, the company is announcing Black Bus 1, a new route that operates between Highbury & Islington and Waterloo. The expansion is notable because it was designed using data supplied by mobile navigation app (and now bus route operator) Citymapper.
Alphabet reportedly considers a $1 billion Lyft investment
Alphabet's autonomous driving aspirations are pretty well-known at this point. The company formerly known as Google owns Waymo, and as a way to further its interests in the space, it's apparently considering a $1 billion investment in Lyft according to Bloomberg. What does Lyft have to do with self-driving cars, pray tell? In May, Waymo and Lyft announced they were working together on testing self-driving taxis. Two months later Lyft announced it would start developing an autonomous platform as a "core" part of its business and that it'd begin licensing the tech out to hardware manufacturers (think: Ford, General Motors and Chrysler). This would give Alphabet another leg up in the space.
Nissan and Mitsubishi to launch 12 EVs and a 'robo' ride service
Renault-Nissan and Mitsubishi are joining forces to produce electric and hybrid cars and become "a global leader in ride-hailing services," they announced. The group, called Alliance 2022, will partner up on 12 electric cars and 40 vehicles with autonomous driving tech by, you guessed it, 2022. "With the emissions rules coming in, it's the end of gas," said Alliance 2022 CEO Carlos Ghosn in a statement. "Between now and 2040 there will be no more diesel and gasoline. This is absolutely a scenario."
The cost of off-peak UberPool trips is going up in London
Uber is quietly increasing the prices of some journeys in and around the London area, the ride-hailing service revealed in an email to drivers. In an attempt to pad the wallets of drivers during slow hours, UberPool ride-shares will be a bit more expensive for passengers. Typically, an UberPool trip is 25 percent cheaper than an UberX journey. Between the hours of 4AM and 8PM on weekdays, however, that discount will be reduced to 15 percent. UberPool is also being disabled at Heathrow Airport, meaning you can no longer get a cheap lift home by sharing with randoms that've also just touched down.
Uber has a new London rival in Taxify
In the US, Uber has an arch rival in Lyft. In the UK, however, Uber doesn't have such an obvious competitor. Sure, there's Mytaxi (formerly Hailo), Gett and Taxiapp for hailing black cabs, or Kabbee for booking minicabs, but no service that quite matches Uber blow for blow. That changes today with the London launch of Taxify -- an Uber clone that already operates in numerous cities around the world, including many in Europe. But how exactly does Taxify hope to compete with Uber, which has over 40,000 drivers roaming the capital? By giving drivers a bigger cut of the fare, and passengers a cheaper ride.
Daimler and Via to launch ride-sharing shuttle service in Europe
Minivans, while not the most exciting form of transportation, could have a role to play in society's shift away from car ownership. Daimler, the company behind Mercedes-Benz, is teaming up with Via to launch a new ride-sharing service across Europe. Like UberPool, it will be an on-demand system that allows passengers to set their own pick-up points and destinations through a smartphone app. Mercedes-Benz will supply the minivans, while Via — which already runs a similar service in New York City, Chicago and Washington DC — manages the software. It's basically a bus service, but with dynamic routes and no predetermined stops.
Intel studies how to make people accept self-driving cars
It's natural to fear what you don't understand. For example, according to a AAA study, 78 percent of drivers are afraid to ride in a self-driving car. That's completely understandable. It's tough to give up control of a few tons of metal flying down the road at 70 miles per hour and feel safe. Intel decided to investigate this fear, and ultimately see if it can solve our autonomous-anxiety problem.
Uber rolls out in-app driver tipping in the UK
Uber can only be successful if it has a growing fleet of drivers willing to ferry people around their local town or city. With this in mind, the company has announced a slew of changes today aimed at appeasing the biggest complaints of UK drivers. Following the US, the app will support rider tipping from tomorrow, making it easier for passengers to reward good service. In addition, Uber will charge riders who force drivers to wait at their agreed pick-up point. From August 22nd, passengers will have to pay 20 pence per minute if they fail to turn up after two minutes.
Uber is reportedly closing down its car-leasing program in the US
Uber's terrible, awful, no-good 2017 isn't over yet. Two years after it started leasing cars to drivers, the ride-hailing company has realized that it should've looked at the economics of such a little better. "The average loss per vehicle was about 10 times what they had thought," the Wall Street Journal reports. Specifically, WSJ's sources say that the company is losing around $9,000 per car. That's a stark contrast to the $500 per-car losses it expected.
Lyft will develop its own self-driving car tech to battle Uber
Lyft is getting into the autonomous driving game too, and opening a research facility in Palo Alto in case you were wondering just how serious the company is. In a post on Medium, the new division's vice president Luc Vincent writes that ten percent of the company's engineers are working on the tech and that that number will only increase as the project goes on. "We aren't thinking of our self-driving division as a side project," he told the New York Times. "It's core to our business."
Lyft reaches one million rides per day but is still well behind Uber
Today, Lyft announced that it's now providing over one million rides per day. The company announced the milestone in a blog post, which highlighted some of its other achievements as well. Lyft noted that for the last four years, it has shown 100 percent year over year growth and it has launched in 160 new cities so far this year. That brings the company's reach to 360 communities and 80 percent of the US population.
Scientists create ride-hailing tech that hides your travel data
When you use a ride-hailing app, you tell the company where you are and where you're going. That's all well and good if those firms truly will never use your data, but some of them don't exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to privacy. That's why a team of scientists from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have developed a new ride-hailing technology that encrypts your travel data and hides them from the app's developers themselves. They didn't even patent their technology in case Uber or any of its rivals are interested in adopting it.
You can order an Uber for those who shun the app
Uber is adding a new feature that lets you arrange a pickup for friends, family, and even Uber boycotters. Although an existing option to set a different pickup location ostensibly allows users to arrange rides for others, the update adds a touch of personalization to the process.
Uber will appeal compulsory English exam for London drivers (updated)
Uber continues to fight against an upcoming rule change that would force London drivers to pass an English language exam. Today, the ride-hailing company has won the right to appeal the requirement, originally proposed by Transport for London in March 2016, that all private hire chauffeurs hold an English GCSE or, if they're from a predominantly non-English speaking country, B1-level qualification. Uber broadly supports the rule change, but thinks the written exam component is unfair. "Writing an essay has nothing to do with communicating with passengers or getting them safely from A to B," Tom Elvidge, Uber's General Manager for London said.
Waze expands it carpooling experiment across California
Alphabet's Waze Rider carpool offering is expanding its service area in California. Now, no matter where you are in the Golden State, you'll be able to grab a ride, TechCrunch reports. Prior to this, it was limited to cities in the Bay area and Israel. As we've previously written, Waze Rider isn't supposed to compete directly against ride-hailing platforms.
