Lyft to use only electric cars by 2030

Would be nice if this is followed up with something more concrete, like "here's 100 million we've put aside and a platform for lyft drivers to trade in their old cars for a new electric one from these partners, plus low-interest financing for new electric cars that can be paid back in an accelerated way through driving lyft cars." Or just anything that's an actual concrete program that means that tommorow there will be a greater proportion of electric cars driven by lyft drivers than there are today.

,, ending our carbon offsets program''

This is the real news hidden in the press release, and it's actually quite sad :(

Your position is that CEOs of car companies are going to plan their products based on what a US-based car sharing platform that might not exist then "commits" to do?

I don't think that's how high capital, low margin businesses make decisions.

That is the exact same way I'm seeing it.

“We will have 0 ICE cars on the road in 2030.”

I don't think I understand the 20xx part of that assertion. Should this imply that 21xx or 22xx would be creditworthy?

Maybe it should be something like "202[3-9]"?

If someone bought a car to use for Lyft, they are probably driving full-time. Full time drivers I've spoken with go through cars a LOT faster than 10 years. Some don't even make it to the 3 year mark before needing a new car.

Lyft and Uber have always had requirements on the maximum age of a vehicle too. I don't think any car on the road today will be eligible in 10 years anyway.

I'm surprised we haven't seen more plug-in hybrids.

A plug-in hybrid is essentially an EV for most people's daily commute, but still has an ICE to relieve range anxiety on road trips. And since the batteries are small, they can be recharged overnight easily without installing a charging port. You can charge from a standard household 120v outlet.

Now if only more manufacturers making EVs and hybrids would stop putting the batteries in the @#$%ing trunk and follow Tesla's lead in putting them in the floor of the car.

Model 3 SR+ goes 250 miles. Bolt goes 259, Leaf goes ~226.

The average Uber/Lyft ride is ~6 miles. The average driver makes ~30 trips per week according to Uber. The gas + maintenance savings would be significant especially if they charge at home overnight.

At least here in Portugal there are already plenty of Renault Zoe being used for Uber. The running costs are lower and range seems more than enough for city driving. With decent chargers the cars are only idle when the drivers are taking a break. As far as I can tell the only roadblock right now is the price of the cars. With the new models coming out of VW and others I expect EVs to take over these roles actually much faster than the general public. There are no long trips and the running cost advantage pays for the extra cost of the car much easier.

The announcement includes privately owned cars.

> This includes cars in the Express Drive rental car partner program for rideshare drivers, our consumer rental car program for riders, our autonomous vehicle program, and drivers’ personal cars used on the Lyft platform.

What happens is that it introduce a middle layer where big pockets know a lot of people want to be drivers so they buy fleets of high end vehicles to act as a lubricant between lyft and drivers.

Shenzhen has 100% electric taxis because the government heavily subsidized it.

Lyft always says things like this. Part of their marketing strategy is to be the "good guy" vs Uber the "bad guy". I know people who always take Lyft over Uber because it has positioned itself as the rideshare beacon of corporate responsibility.

Possibly a high percentage but there are a lot of use cases that electric cars don't cover. No electric sales has a very high bar even if it's mostly pickups and big SUVs/vans.

I will be neither surprised if they do nor if they don’t. Tesla have ~ten billion miles of experience, so at this point I think the question is “how long will it take to figure out a data-efficient algorithm?” rather than “can it be done?”

Back in 2009 I was expecting this to be available before 2019, and I didn’t have in mind anything as limited as either the “motorways only” autopilot of Tesla nor the (single?) heavily mapped city system of Waymo.

It doesn’t take much to imagine a model where this works. Lyft already rents cars to drivers. Just stage them around town and when the first shift car battery is dead the driver can park it somewhere, plug in and swap to another car.

Can you work with practitioners and issue a specific type of bond to finance the work? If so, do it!

In Lyft's case, they can acquire capital cheaper than individuals for mobility assets, at a lower cost ("green bonds"). For example, this was very much the Solar City model: They were not a solar install company, they were a financial engineering company that could go to the capital markets to finance your rooftop solar to make it affordable until the price of solar came down to where purchase is now the superior option. Lyft can encourage, finance, and work with local jurisdictions to install EV charging stations where the data shows drivers need them. They can sign a PPA (power purchase agreement) for those charging stations to purchase renewable energy for the EV fleet keeping costs under control (versus volatile petroleum costs). And most importantly, this halves the per mile costs of a vehicle (versus internal combustion), allowing Lyft and a driver to capture more revenue than they already are.

Do I think Uber and Lyft are viable businesses? Absolutely not, but I'm not going to throw shade on legitimate climate change mitigation efforts. That doesn't respect the people who are championing these efforts, or their leadership above who have to take the leap to get buy in from the business and push them forward. There is real work and hard conversations behind these efforts.

This seems like a snarky comment.

It's good they've got an ambition, a plan, and a realistic chance of doing it. You're just sitting there being nasty about it.

I believe the issue there is that they wouldn't realistically have enough drivers with electric cars by 2025. If they entirely managed their own fleet they could make that happen, but most lyft drivers likely don't make enough money to buy an electric within the next 5 years.

It's a commitment. It is not action, but that's not a flaw. They serve two different purposes.

Commitments are how companies orient themselves to the future while leaving open the possibility that things might change. They give people a frame to be critical of or complementary towards future actions. I see many comments on HN saying we should not critique company Y for thing A because company Y is in the business of doing B, not A.

This is Lyft saying they are in the business of doing electric cars. It's ambiguous and uncertain what that means now, but is a theme to compare future actions against.

To look back to a previous instance: when Google set "don't be evil" as their slogan, they suggested that they were interested in ethical critiques. I think experience has shown them to both consistently fall short of that slogan and also be more responsive to ethical critiques than, say, Palantir or Facebook. I would expect this Lyft statement to play out similarly.

I'm not excited by this statement, but it's not nothing.

> So much excitement here for what?

Corporate action on climate is needed. Also I don't see _any_ excitement in this thread, mostly negativity and lukewarm reaction, sarcasm, etc.

> Just seems like fluff to get them into the news cycle.

Not to me, do you have anything to back this up? Why would Lyft care about the news cycle?

> They commit(whatever that means) to using only electric cars in 10 years.

The meaning is pretty clear.

> This is a big fat nothingburger.

This kind of namecalling and negative attitude really doesn't belong on HN.

You have copy+pasted this comment all over the thread, why? I've flagged and downvoted

According to this article: https://www.autonews.com/mobility-report/ev-sales-growing-fa...

It is expected that more than half of new cars sold will be EV by 2030. This will by federal incentives no doubt, and also by the further disruption of the car industry by the pandemic. Still, it seems low to me. And, I would expect by 2030 it will be the better choice to go electric for Lyft/Uber drivers due to decreased maintenance and overall cost per mile compared to ICE.

The problem right now is availability of reasonably priced options, but that will be solved in the next 10 years almost certainly. So, without the proclamation of a mandate my gut says 90%+ of Lyft/Uber drivers would go electric because it's the better business choice for them. So I don't think it's "Big", I think it's a calculated risk with good intentions to grab some news headlines. But that's ok, maybe it will encourage others to make bolder bets, which would be good. Not quite "Big" in my opinion.

How is this big? Just seems like fluff to get them into the news cycle.

They commit(whatever that means) to using only electric cars in 10 years.

This is a big fat nothingburger.