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Ride-sharing

The emergence of app-based ride-sharing platforms like Uber and Lyft transformed the way people in cities get around — and not always for the better. It nearly decimated the taxi industry while offering riders a more seamless way to travel. But it also choked many cities with car traffic and disrupted labor with the popularization of gig work. The Verge covers all the news and analysis related to ride-sharing as well as what the future holds for this mode of transportation.

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Do ads work for Uber?

According to The Wall Street Journal, ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft “say people are receptive to their ads,” with customers “less likely to cancel” their rides if they’re distracted by advertisements while they wait.

Uber has been cramming ads wherever it can, but it doesn’t work everywhere. The Journal writes that people hated them in push notifications so much that Uber cut those out in under a day, but folks don’t mind movie trailers on in-car tablets.


Uber Eats gets live location sharing, so now you can order a pizza in the park.

Just in time for al fresco dining season, too. But for real, don’t make your courier hack through a jungle or swim across rivers to find you. And don’t forget to tip!


Uber live location sharing
Your location will only be shared when the courier is three minutes away and if you’re within 100m of the dropoff location. 
Image: Uber
Revel offers 25 percent charging discounts to eligible Uber drivers in NYC.

In addition to discounts for eligible Uber Pro drivers, Revel will use anonymized Uber data to decide on future EV charging station locations to address “charging deserts,” according to a press release shared with The Verge by Uber spokesperson Conor Ferguson.

Revel CEO Frank Reig says this will help it grow its charging business in NYC and, eventually, other cities. Revel plans to add 48 public fast-charging stations near the rideshare waiting area of New York’s La Guardia Airport.


A picture of a Revel moped and Tesla EV and
Revel will use Uber driver data to direct its EV charging station expansion.
Image: Revel
Uber Eats’ sidewalk delivery robots are coming to Japan.

The robots are expected to hit the sidewalks of Tokyo starting at the end of March, marking Uber’s first international expansion of its autonomous delivery service. The six-wheeled delivery robots are manufactured by Cartken, an Oakland-based AI company, and operations will be supervised by Mitsubishi Electric. Delivery robots are growing more popular, but they still require a team of human workers to make the system work.


Uber Eats sidewalk delivery robot
The robot is designed to avoid various obstacles, yield to pedestrians, and stop at traffic lights before crossing a road 
Image: Uber Eats
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You may encounter trouble booking an Uber to your Valentine’s Day date tonight.

That’s because thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers in over a dozen cities are going on strike for 24 hours to protest low wages and unfair practices by the gig economy companies. Their demands? A larger cut of fares, a living wage, transparency in pay calculations, and an end to unfair deactivations.

“The main challenge is surviving,” said Nupur Chowdhury, an Uber driver and ride-share organizer in Arlington who helped plan the strike in the Washington area. “We cannot make the same amount of money we used to make, even if we work double the hours.”


Typo sends Lyft stock on wild ride.

An extra zero mistakenly added to a closely watched profit margin metric sent the stock soaring over 60 percent before the CFO later corrected things. The stock is still up over 15 percent after the company forecasted better-than expected bookings and a path to profitability.


Up up and away.
Up up and away.
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Uber is shuttering its alcohol delivery service, Drizly.

The alcohol app has been a cybersecurity headache since Uber acquired it a few years ago. The FTC found out that a hack affected 2.5 million customers in 2020, two years after the company initially learned about a security flaw.

“We’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” Uber SVP of delivery Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty told Axios.


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Uber and Lyft will pay $328 million to drivers in wage-theft settlement.

Uber will pay $290 million (3 percent of its revenue generated last quarter) and Lyft will pay $38 million (4 percent of its revenue) to settle allegations that the ride-sharing companies illegally withheld wages and mandatory sick leave from drivers in New York. Over 100,000 drivers in the state could be eligible to receive funds under the settlement.


TFW your Uber driver is an empty seat.

Starting today, Phoenix residents can use the Uber app to hail a ride in a driverless Waymo vehicle. The two companies — former rivals turned frenemies (?) — first announced the partnership earlier this year. Tellingly, it’s only available in Arizona, and not California, where tensions around robotaxis are starting to get, well, tense.


Screenshot of the Uber app on an iPhone prompting a rider to accept a ride with a Waymo-operated autonomous vehicle.
Image: Waymo

How Uber learned to stop fighting and play nice with taxis

Uber is listing more and more taxi drivers in its app, most recently in Los Angeles. How did the two sides come together? In short, money.

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Uber is reportedly working on an AI chatbot for its food delivery app.

As spotted by Bloomberg, code in the Uber Eats app suggests the service is working on an AI chatbot to provide recommendations to customers.

It’s not the only app thinking about AI and food delivery, either. Bloomberg reported last month that DoorDash is working on an AI chatbot as well. DoorDash also announced today that it’s rolling out an AI-powered voice ordering service.


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Uber is upping its minimum driving age in California.

According to a report from the Associated Press, Uber is increasing its minimum driver age in California from 19 to 25 years old — a move it blames on rising insurance costs in the state:

Personal injury attorneys have created a cottage industry specializing in suing rideshare platforms like ours, pushing Uber’s California state-mandated commercial insurance costs to rise by more than 65% in just two years.

Californians under the age of 25 who signed up to the platform before Wednesday will get to keep driving for Uber.


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Lyft isn’t the biggest fan of surge pricing, either.

So much so that it wants to get rid of it, CEO David Risher said during Lyft’s earnings call on Tuesday. As reported by TechCrunch:

“[Primetime pricing] is a bad form of price raising,” said Risher. “It’s particularly bad because riders hate it with a fiery passion. And so we’re really trying to get rid of it, and because we’ve got such a good driver supply…it’s decreased significantly.”


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An Uber change of fortunes.

Uber’s latest financial results include an honest to goodness operating profit, “for the first time in Uber’s history,” according to CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Pre-tax earnings stood at $326 million, a huge change compared to the $713 million operating loss it reported the same time last year, The Financial Times notes.


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Giving up the ghost... kitchens.

Wendy’s is permanently closing its ghost kitchen business. Butler Hospitality, a ghost kitchen company, shut down entirely. Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens lost a bunch of restaurant partners. Uber Eats is trimming its menu.

I guess you could say these kitchens got... ghosted.