All posts tagged: lyft

Lyft’s CEO Says, ‘We’re the Good Uber’

Lyft’s CEO Says, ‘We’re the Good Uber’

Published by skeptic

Three Years AGO, Lyft was floundering. The perpetual also-ran to Uber was in danger of being run off the road entirely. The founders were in charge, and in March 2023, they hired former Microsoft and Amazon executive David Risher to turn things around. The new CEO has expanded its service in other countries, made deals with Waymo and Nvidia, lowered ride cancellations, and paid drivers more. Just this week, Lyft announced that customers in New York would also see taxis among their options. The company now reports a profit—but it’s still deep in second place in ride-sharing, and its stock has been down this year. I recently spoke to Risher on Lyft’s prospects, his jaundiced view of Uber, and his plans to manage fleets of autonomous cars owned by tech companies or civilians. STEVEN LEVY: Where are you on your turnaround mission? DAVID RISHER: When I came in, we were losing share—Lyft was 26 or 27 percent compared to the other guy. We were losing money, $300 million a year. Things were not looking good. …

TechCrunch Mobility: Elon’s admission | TechCrunch

TechCrunch Mobility: Elon’s admission | TechCrunch

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Tesla earnings came and went, and much of it fell into the “we expected this” category. Investors seemed surprised by the $1.4 billion in free cash flow, which gave shares a brief bump, and revenue met or slightly exceeded expectations, depending on which batch of analysts you reviewed.  The earnings call, however, did deliver one eyebrow-raising moment that prompted readers (including some ex-Tesla engineers and other founders in the industry) to reach out to me with some schadenfreude-tinted prose. CEO Elon Musk admitted that millions of Tesla owners will need hardware upgrades to run a future, more capable version of its Full Self-Driving software that doesn’t require human supervision.  There are financial and legal implications for Tesla. As senior reporter Sean O’Kane wrote, Tesla owners with Hardware 3 cars have spent years bugging the company and Musk for a straight answer …

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

TechCrunch Mobility: When a robotaxi has to call 911

Published by skeptic

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. To get this in your inbox, sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! Waymo shared that it is now providing 500,000 paid robotaxi rides every week. That number is small compared to its human-driven ride-hailing counterparts, like Lyft and Uber. But that’s not what I found most interesting. The pace of growth in rides, new markets, and how it compares to its fleet size is what got my attention. We built a chart (which you can view below) that helps visualize the rapid scale.  That scale, however, does create new challenges, including the inevitably of the robotaxis becoming paralyzed, like so many did during the blackout in California in December. It got us wondering, what happens when a robotaxi gets stuck — and who unsticks it?  Senior reporter Sean O’Kane dug into Waymo’s system (which includes its own roadside assistance team), as well as at least six incidents in which first responders had to …

New Data Shows Robotaxis Competing on Price—and Speed

New Data Shows Robotaxis Competing on Price—and Speed

Published by skeptic

In San Francisco, people wanting to get from point A to point B have a few fairly unique options. There’s Uber and Lyft, both headquartered in the area and also available around the world. Then there’s Waymo, the Alphabet subsidiary, providing driverless rides in just a handful of US cities (coming to more places this year). Then, starting last fall, Bay Area denizens also got access to electric automaker Tesla’s ride-hail service, which operates as a “robotaxi” in Texas but as a more traditional service, with drivers behind the wheel, in California. For months, the new and futuristic “robotaxi” services felt like a novelty. Tourists gawked and climbed in for joy rides, but Waymo tended to be slower and more expensive than the human-driven alternatives. Now new data and analysis from the ride-hail price aggregator company Obi finds that the novel services’ prices and wait times are getting more competitive in the Bay Area. It could be a sign that the tech is moving closer to its promise to provide cheaper and widely-available rides—which might …