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Lyft Says Nearly 250K of Its Passengers Ditched a Personal Car In 2017 (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Lyft has a new report out detailing its "economic impact" for 2017, and the document includes a lot of stats on its performance throughout the year. The ride-hailing provider claims 375.5 million rides for the year, which is 130 percent growth measured year-over-year. It served 23 million different passengers, itself a 92 percent YoY increase, and had 1.4 million drivers on the platform -- 100 percent growth vs. its total for 2016. Lyft is making some especially strong claims regarding its impact on car ownership trends: In 2017 alone, it said that almost a quarter of a million passengers on its platform dropped owning a personal vehicle, due to the availability of ridesharing specifically. Fifty percent of its users also report driving their own car less because of Lyft's service, and a quarter of those on the platform say they don't feel personal vehicle ownership is that important anymore. The ride-hailing company also found attitudes generally favorable towards self-driving vehicles and their use: 83 percent of Lyft passengers surveyed by the company said they'd be open to hailing and riding in a self-driving vehicle once they're available.
You mean "illegal taxi service" right? I don't care if people use these services, I am on the side of the taxi companies! They provide such great service.
What this really means is these car-less people are now driving for Lyft.
What a puffy PR statement on techcrunch. I guess we're gonna see another annoucement of yet another funding round and they'll get a billion dollars for one percent of the company thereby giving a value of BADDA DUM! ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS!
Kim Jong Un should take note. If he went into "tech" startups, he could finance his regime without the illegal shit.
Hey, I know! Create a kimchi app, you'll be called a tech company (look, folks call Lyft a "tech company!) and BINGO! ridiculous valuations!
2019, stock market crash......
I have a staff partially composed of millenials and Generation Z staff. A few of the younger staff have opted to not purchase a car and instead use either Uber or Lyft to head into work. In speaking with one, she indicated she is saving to purchase a house and not having a vehicle is allowing her to do that. My son indicated originally he didn't want his drivers licence until he realized Lyft doesn't go to the desert.
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Most people that benefit from Lyft or Uber live in denser areas that had taxi service or public transit anyway. Did the people being interviewed move in the last few years and maybe not buy another car?
In the same time frame, how many people moved to more suburban areas where a (non-shared) car is generally needed to get around?
Once people don't have cars and all the taxi companies have been killed off Lyft can put the prices up.
It'll be the same with Amazon. Once their brick and mortar competitors have been killed off, Amazon will get a lot less cheap.
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There's a pretty big stigma to admitting to hard financial times, but I'd bet money these folks just couldn't afford to keep their own car anymore. For those of you playing at home this is a Bad Thing.
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I ditched my car, well... wife took it, anyway I would say this can be very different depending on your case but I spend an average of 300€ on Uber per month, when in the past I used to spend around 500€ with my car, loan+taxes+tolls+insurance+fuel+parking.
I don't believe that at all. they are showing their cards that they know very little about their customers.
Maybe 250 of their customers did actually ditched a car, but 250,000... Sorry, I can call out that lie on the subject line alone. Now if they are counting "ditching your car", by meaning "I've never owned a car and while I was planning on buying one, I decided against it because of my use of Uber/Lyft." I'm more likely to buy that, but 250k people selling their car they own already, doubtful. I know many city dwellers who own cars. They use them very little, taking Uber/Lyft, biking or taking public transportation. if they already owned a car though, they still have a car because it's going to be cheaper to drive across your state yourself than taking Uber/Lyft.
Fifty percent of its users also report driving their own car less because of Lyft's service
Guess what Lyft, 100% of your users drove less because of your service. That's what you do. This is a shitty PR campaign and nothing else.
True ridesharers take the train.
That's awesome. Everyone should just stop spending money on everything. Nothing but good times ahead.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Average trip is $14. If you need to take 2 trips a day, that's $28 a day. Typically about 6 miles per trip, so let's say 12 miles a day.
Car insurance would be about $2.25/day for an under 25 year old millennial ($820/year). Fuel cost for 12 miles a day using a relatively cheap 24 mpg car is around $1.25 assuming a price of $2.50/gal. So now we're up to $3.50/day and haven't added in car payments. I'm not sure what kind of care you want to get for $24.50/day but a lease on a new car of $23,000 should be around $6.50/day (around $200/month), of course if you lease your insurance payments will be much higher because of the additional required coverage. But still we're only up to $10/day, a far cry from the $28/day you might spend on ridesharing. I left out maintenance costs, they exist, but I really don't think they are going to exceed $18/day.
To ditch your car, you really need to not need ridesharing more than once or twice a week. Anything more and you start to break even, in my opinion, especially if you are able to optimize with a lower end vehicle that you pay off and keep for several years without having to make payments.
Depending on what city you are in, public transportation can end up being a break even versus car ownership. In my particular case it's cheaper to have a car than use public transportation, and public transportation is cheaper than using ridesharing. Convenience of ridesharing is better than public transportation, and for some people the convenience of ridesharing could be better than car ownership. But I don't think ridesharing is cheaper for most people, if any.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Uber/Lyft is roughly $15 for a 5 mile ride. Figure you live 5 miles from work. That's $30/day, 250 workdays/year, or $7500/yr.
That's squarely in-line with the cost to own a new car. $6354/yr for a small car, $8171/yr for a medium sedan. Except that ownership cost assumes 15k miles/yr driven. The Uber/Lyft cost above is for only 2.5k miles/yr. So if you own, you're paying the same as two 5 mile rides per workday, plus you get to drive 12,500 miles anywhere you want each year for free.
Basically, when you use Uber/Lyft, you're paying for use of a car plus the time and services of a driver. When you own or lease your own car, you're eliminating the cost of having a personal chauffeur.
Bad business case. If everyone is getting rid of their cars and taking Lyft, where are they going to get cheap drivers to work for Lyft?
That data is too vague to actually be representative or accurate. How do they know? Did they perdonally speak with 250,000 people and get an hinest answer each time? I doubt it, it isn't specifically indicated anywhere. I'll bet it's great for their shares, though. You must learn this, children: corporations lie, and they lie all the time.
Not for very long. As soon as a smart criminal or two take the recorder along with the driver's money at the end of a ride, the next generation of such cameras will be hailing "instant uploading of videos to the cloud". And the cabbies will upgrade. They are upgrading already — credit card acceptance by taxis is rising. Though cash still remains an option, that too may be on its way out.
BTW, cities like New York have required data-collection from taxis for years — and now require the same from Uber/Lyft as well. Scandals like this will, no doubt, happen again.
At any rate, I can accept the opposition based on privacy — even if I still think, you are naive, if you think, paying cash in a taxi is substantially beneficial to your privacy. But anything based on the supposed "illegality" of Uber/Lyft is just nonsense.
Unless you turn off and disable your smart phone, when you enter a cab, tracking you personally is already easy — and will become more so, when the new generation of taxi equipment is adopted. To Uber, Lyft, or traditional taxis (as well as to any retailer, policeman, or passer-by) the WiFi and Bluetooth radios in your phone already uniquely identify you... Crap, it is already happening.
May as well ride Lyft and save money...
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