Lyft invests $100M in its drivers | Hacker News Reader

Lyft invests $100M in its drivers

techcrunch.com

49 pointsobahareth19 comments

Lyft is still outsourcing risk to those drivers.

Lyft is certainly well aware of how much money it saves by ensuring that when expensive tragedies happen, they are borne by individuals. As to how well the drivers are prepared, well it's going to vary by individual, but it's safe to say that none of them understand the risks they are taking on as well as Lyft does, and in the aggregate most are unprepared, not even having proper rideshare insurance.

This was my first thought as well - it seems like a thought out risk mitigation strategy that plays well from a PR perspective.

It's a savvy move, and to your point likely escapes the typical drivers awareness. So at what point does regulation get in the mix as Lyft or other ride sharing companies take direct action that signals risk acknowledgement or indemnification?

Alternative headline: "Lyft invests $100 million in self-driving car maintenance hubs." By centralizing cleaning and routine maintenance to it's centers Lyft is laying the ground work to provide a place for self-driving vehicles to return to between revenue service.

Yeah, the article content doesn't hold up the headline. It does not sound one bit like Lyft is investing in its drivers. That would have to mean something a lot more grand than "cheaper oil changes" or better car maintenance. A giant multinational multi-billion dollar corporation is not investing in you if they just help your car get less wrecked.

It would mean they are funding post-secondary education. It would mean they are funding your healthcare, or giving you a major raise.

I love Lyft, but this headline is a disaster, it's a pure native ad for Lyft and totally doesn't belong on HN.

People keep saying the Lyft and Uber endgame is self driving cars, but there are not going to be fully autonomous self driving cars for at least 10 years. It's not a realistic business plan and I very much doubt that's actually the strategy at these companies.

Where does the number “10 years” come from? 5 seems plausible to this non-domain expert

5 is maybe doable in a limited context, e.g. in residential neighborhoods of American cities. No way for the rest of the world though. The road systems are too complicated.

Seems like that's plenty enough to be a large and growing business, though?

Snow.

Not even. We are at least 5-10 years away from operational fully autonomous cars being used in production in the bay area. There's really no timeline at all for when we might have an operational autonomous car that can handle driving conditions more severe than light rain.

10 is optimistic IMHO. The popular 80/20 rule is at work here. It's going to take a lot of time to get the rest 20% right. For example, how long it's going to take to solve the driving on the snowy roads?

I, for one, have never taken a Lyft from San Francisco to Tahoe.

"On the roads" doesn't mean "Every single road in every single market around the globe"

I agree, but I'm not sure the valley does. I recently did a phone interview with an autonomous car company in Silicon Valley where the recruiter told me the company's goal was to put a level 5 autonomous vehicle on the streets by 2020. Ultimately I declined an on-site interview for other reasons, but when weighing their offered compensation, I didn't value those RSUs a penny over $0.

The headline could stand alone as a succinct master class in the value of the "relations" part of PR. Imagine Uber getting a headline like this from TC in 2018, assuming it did exactly the same substantive thing.

1.4M drivers now, they are doubling to 2.8M over 5 years.

100M / 2.8M = $35 each. Or about one oil change.

Interesting the last bit, this will technically subsidize Uber's work. Most of the drivers are on both unless they add a minimum driven hours per week to get this perk.

This is no better than a press release. How does this absolute crap make it to the HN front page? Is it hatred of Uber? I don't get why such a fluff piece can get so many upvotes.

Even the title "Uber invests in its drivers" sounds like a press release.

The only item in this that strikes me as "investing in its drivers" is the tax education. Everything else would be better described as cost subsidies intended to incentivize drivers to continue to work for Lyft as independent contractors.

This sounds like yet more cost on an unsustainable business model. Just like Uber announced today (iirc) that the are paying a bunch more quasi-benefits to their drivers in the EU.

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