That's their marketing strategy. Convince everyone that they will be ubiquitous and as if by magic they will be.
Why is that? Right now the local players seem to be competing very effectively.
Because they're trying so hard, and the only time I ever hear of people using Lyft instead of Uber is when Lyft is offering some massive promotion.
(disclaimer: anecdote, but then again we're talking about vague feelings)
It's funny you say that, because this is exactly how Uber itself expands (or used to at least). Lyft does indeed need to offer a promotion to get people to use it, it's almost always like that when cutting into an existing, (somewhat) established market. When Uber started, they had to do the same thing to convince people to use Uber, not only on the customer facing side, but on the driver side too.
Uber still has promotions in new markets, at least as of late 2014. I registered about a year ago when they showed up in New Haven and periodically get emails reminding me that I have a $20 credit for my first ride.
Lyft does much more aggressive deals though. When I moved to San Diego ~ 3 months back, they gave me 1month of half price rides. Considering I spend > $1000 per month on rides, that was over $500 of savings.
Woah, over $1000/month in rides? I have to ask why? Assuming you do not own a car but I would assume its efficient to own a vehicle in SD?
When Lyft launched in NYC about a year ago, they handed me 15 free rides of $25 or less. For the last few weeks, they've been offering 50% off all Lyft and Lyft Line rides M-F.
From what I've seen, Uber offers $25 or so against a single ride when you sign up, not much more.
If they can lobby their way out of being illegal company to being somehow legal, they can use this power against competition. Remember what they did to Lyft year ago using some blackhat booking scheme? Imagine what they will do once they have lobbying power.
We'll learn a lot more as we get closer to the IPO (estimated) in Q4 '16 or Q1 '17. As an investor and rideshare driver (Uber and Lyft), I'm skeptical.