Lyft resets its driverless ambitions
President John Zimmer had predicted autonomous cars doing most Lyft trips by 2021
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I’m back from the Micromobility Europe conference, where it was great to meet so many Oversharing readers and interesting folks in the micromobility community. I’ll have lots of good stuff from the conference—scooternomics, ‘instant’ delivery, and more—in this week’s subscriber-only editions. To get those issues as well as exclusive access to comments, community threads, and other paid features, you can upgrade your subscription. If you’re interested in purchasing a discounted group subscription for your company, get in touch directly at oversharingstuff@gmail.com.
Driverless taxis.
I’m old enough to remember when Lyft president and co-founder John Zimmer predicted in a very long post on Medium that most Lyft rides would be in driverless taxis by 2021. What he actually wrote was that “within five years a fully autonomous fleet of cars will provide the majority of Lyft rides across the country.” I want to highlight the phrasing here because as far as I can tell, fully driverless predictions are always five years away. Five years is that magical number that seems close enough to be real (to investors, to consumers) but far enough to provide some cover in case it doesn’t come to fruition, or needs to be delayed another, er, five years. I mean look at this chart! It’s so assured of our driverless future, it doesn’t even need a y-axis!
Back in 2016 when Zimmer posted his vision to Medium, Lyft was on a high. It had recently raised $1 billion in funding led by General Motors, more than doubling its valuation to $5.5 billion, and signed GM as a strategic partner in the pursuit of fully autonomous vehicles. Ride-hail companies were bleeding money but pitching investors on a lucrative future in which driverless taxis replaced human drivers and their associated labor costs, leaving the companies free to profit. Uber had just bought driverless truck startup Otto, kicking off its Anthony Levandowski fiasco. If investors needed another reason to bet big on ride-hail technology, the promise of that fully driverless future was it.
Anyway, here in actual 2022, driverless taxis are still not really a thing. A handful of companies have limited license to charge for driverless rides—Cruise got permission from a California state regulator earlier this month—but Lyft is not one of them. For-hire Lyft trips are still provided by regular human drivers, and Lyft is still spending a lots on driver incentives. Lyft’s stock is trading at $14 and change, well below its $72 IPO price. Its market cap is hovering around $5 billion, less than its 2016 private valuation. And last week Zimmer drastically revised that driverless vision in an interview with CNBC:
“What we see happening is that there will be a hybrid network, meaning on day 1, just like what happened with phones, you didn’t have 3G go to 4G go to 5G on separate networks. You still needed to be able to make a 3G call when 4G wasn’t available.”
“The same thing’s going to be true with autonomous vehicles. … It’ll do five percent of the trips. 95% of the time you’re going to rely on a rideshare driver. So that’s all going to happen within the Lyft network, and we’ll scale up with our autonomous partners.”
Cool, so, since we’ve blown past the 2021 target for the majority of Lyft rides being automated, now we’re aiming for 5% by… nope, Zimmer didn’t give a date. (Lyft did partner last fall with AV venture Motional to launch a commercial driverless taxi service in Las Vegas by 2023, which may or may not happen.) I genuinely wonder how many people took the five-year prediction seriously back in 2016, and how much that contributed to Lyft’s ability to raise money from investors, including its billion-dollar deal with GM. I wonder if even Zimmer seriously believed it at the time, or if he was just telling investors what they wanted to hear. Part of the startup game is making big promises with axes-free charts that generate buzz and capital for your company and betting that if they don’t pan out in five years, most people won’t be keeping track.
Crosswalks.
Here is a fun story from the Washington Post on how crosswalks embellished with street art have fewer traffic incidents:
When Chris Visions began painting a ground mural in Richmond, he had no idea his street art might help save lives.
Since the painted crosswalk — which highlights the Jackson Ward neighborhood’s Black culture and legacy — was finished in September, the intersection became safer for pedestrians and motorists, with episodes of cars braking quickly to avoid pedestrians and other close calls reduced by eight incidents, a decline of more than 56 percent, data shows.
Since 2019, Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative has funded 42 street murals in 41 U.S. cities with grants of up to $25,000. In April, Bloomberg Philanthropies published a report with transportation firm Sam Schwartz finding “significantly improved safety performance across a variety of measures during periods when asphalt art was installed.” The report theorized that drivers were more likely to yield to pedestrians after art was installed at intersections, while pedestrians were less likely to cross against traffic signals or outside marked boundaries.
The Asphalt Art Initiative adds to a solid body of research on how street experiments and intersection repairs can create safer, more desirable streets and public spaces. Unfortunately not all urban interventions are as well received as ones backed by tens of thousands of dollars from Bloomberg Philanthropies. We talked before about Crosswalk Collective, a group of anonymous concerned citizens in L.A. that was painting DIY crosswalks at intersections in response to perceived inaction from city officials. Despite popular support for the DIY effort, the city has been busy removing those crosswalks and issuing fines to participants who were caught painting the unauthorized crossings, leading Crosswalk Collective to launch a GoFundMe page.
The Bloomberg Philanthropies report notes this tension between popular and research-based support for such intersection repairs and the official position of many U.S. regulations. “There has been considerable public feedback, anecdotal evidence, and analyses of individual locations indicating that asphalt art can have these traffic-calming benefits and encourage safer behavior,” the report states. “However, despite broad support from people who use and design streets, art within the public roadway network has faced regulatory hurdles in the United States and elsewhere because of concerns about compliance with current design standards and guidance that governs roadway markings. These concerns have persisted in the absence of much rigorous evaluation or published literature on safety performance of asphalt art projects.”
Outlier.
Something strange is going on with Uber and Lyft in Seattle, where demand for rides remains well below pre-pandemic levels, the Seattle Times reports. Ride-hail drivers provided 3.4 million rides in King County in the first quarter of this year, roughly half of the 6.9 million they did in the Q1 2020 and 44% of the 7.8 million in Q1 2019. The number of permits being issued to ride-hail drivers by King County has also plunged: 12,285 in 2021 compared to 80,000 in 2019 and 90,000 in 2018.
A spokesperson for Uber told the paper that the “low trip numbers in Seattle are far outside the norm” and both companies have blamed low ridership on new minimum pay requirements. At the same time, it’s unclear whether this is about ride-hail or about commuting and travel habits in post-pandemic Seattle. Ridership on city buses, for example, “correlates closely to the number of trips with Uber and Lyft,” with boardings in April 2022 around half of what they were in April 2019.
Also in the Seattle gig economy, the city council late last month unanimously approved a measure for app-based delivery workers to earn the local minimum wage of $17.27.
Other stuff.
Top Swiss court rules Uber is an employer. Bolt rolling out 16,000 new e-bikes across European cities. Car-sharing startup Turo expands to New York State and France. Washington D.C. reimbursing teachers $200 on bicycle purchases. D.C. wants $500 annual fee on owners of heavy trucks. EV-Truck Startup Electric Last Mile Says It Plans to Liquidate. Bird laying off 23% of staff, 130-some people. British online car retailer Cazoo laying off 15% of staff. Uber CEO says company is ‘recession resistant.’ Delivery Hero drops out of Germany’s blue chip stock index. Asda expands Uber Eats partnership. DoorDash completes Wolt acquisition. Onfleet raises $23 million for last-mile delivery software. Rotterdam offering free e-cargo bike rentals for transporting bulky waste. Tier subsidiary Spin pledges $2 million for academic micromobility research. Waymo partners with Uber Freight. Uber powering emergency food deliveries in Ukraine. Australia’s consumer watchdog accuses Airbnb of misleading prices. San Francisco determines self-driving cars can’t be cited for moving violations under state law. McDonald’s diners complain stores overwhelmed by delivery orders. Airbnb shifting host data to Chinese rivals ahead of exit. Downtown Denver residents complain of being “terrorized” by scooter riders. Most of Vancouver is a 15-minute city. Uber Eats injuries. DoorDash hot sauce. Airbnb for gardens. Elizabeth line purple.