ADSactly Tech News: A New Era of Ride Hailing, Mobile Convenience Stores and Information Age Accessibility
Technology has transformed how people get from place to place in a significant way.
There are new business models and tech companies looking to disrupt almost every area of modern day life including a staple of modern society, the urban convenience store.
I remember when I was young, I used to take the bus. It's funny to think that although I would imagine most people have taken a bus at some point in their life these days if you don't have a car there are is a middle ground between a bus and a taxi and there are options at many different price points when it comes to transportation in major U.S. cities.
It has only been six years since the famous ride-hailing company Uber made it's debut. The effect it has had in transportation globally has been pretty dramatic. Before Uber you had to either take a taxi or bum a ride from a friend. When the service came along it made the job of getting a ride as easy as making a call or sending a text message. Some people are still not familiar with Uber surprisingly. Many of our nation's seniors have stubbornly decided not to adopt the use of smartphones.
This may serve them great benefit when I think into it more... I sometimes wonder if smartphones are truly a blessing or actually a curse. That's a topic for another article though.
If you have never heard of Uber which is still remotely possible, it has been described like this:
Uber is a convenient, inexpensive and safe taxi service. Hire a private driver to pick you up & take you to your destination with the tap of a button on any smartphone device. A nearby driver often arrives to pick you up within minutes. Not only is this an on-demand car service, but you can even watch as your driver is en-route to come pick you up.
It has managed to put a lot of taxi drivers out of a job while at the same time creating new jobs for the technologically savy. You just need a smartphone and a car essentially and you can begin your brand new career in driving people around!
Now that I've opened this can of worms and explained what Uber is all about, it is important to note that they aren't the only player in the game these days. I remember when I went back home and was surprised to use another service called Lyft. I had used Uber in the past and had assumed Lyft worked the same way. It appeared to offer a better price on a ride and boy was I surprised at what happened!
After ordering my ride it picked me up promptly just as an Uber driver would have done. Everything seemed to be identical until my driver took me off course. I assumed the Lyft driver was taking a shortcut but then it became apparent that we were headed in the completely opposite direction. I questioned the driver about where we were going. He said he had to make another pickup and then we would be back on our way. It took me a split second to realize that I was not taking any old Uber copycat, this was a carpool service!
In an article published about a week ago by The Verge, it seems that Lyft originally was an Uber copycat but now it has grown into much more!
Lyft’s app for riders is getting a fresh new look, with a greater emphasis put on shared rides and public transportation. It’s Lyft first redesign in almost three years, and will begin rolling out to everyone who uses the ride-hailing service by the end of June, the company said.
So clearly Lyft is embracing this new competitive advantage of carpooling and trying to make the most of it! I'm completely in support of carpooling over traditional Uber rides. After all, it is more eco-friendly and sustainable isn't it?
There will be some major differences. Lyft’s carpooling service Lyft Line is being rebranded as “Shared Rides,” and will be more prominently featured in the app — part of the ride-hailing company’s broader mission to reduce its carbon footprint by encouraging strangers to take more trips together. After inputting a destination, riders will be asked to choose between a solo ride or a shared one, with fare estimates offered for both.
Lyft was one of the first ride-hailing companies to offer carpooling, launching Lyft Line in 2014. Now the company wants these shared trips to account for 50 percent of all of its business by the end of 2020. That goal fits in nicely with its other predictions, such as road pricing to encourage more carpooling, and ending personal car ownership.
In regards to my hometown of Seattle, I think Lyft is moving in a great direction and between them and the addition of increased bicycle lane routes perhaps we will get to a point where people really don't feel the need to own a car!
“A lot of how we’ve thought about this is to put shared rides front and center,” Lyft president John Zimmer told The Verge. The app “looks a lot better, and looks a lot more modern. But aside from it just being a fresh coat of paint, there was a lot of intention into how can we use the redesign to better deliver upon the mission of the company.”
If they are getting fully behind making themselves the greatest carpooling service to ever exist on this planet, I can get behind that. When it comes to ride-hailing I'll put Lyft ahead of Uber in my book!
Now that I've sort of strung Uber and Lyft together and explained what they are, what they do and how they are different, it is time to introduce a new theme to this evolving story. Waymo.
But wait... What does Waymo have to do with all of this? Well as 
Oh wait, that can't be good for human drivers could it? Not in the slightest, but that appears to be where we are going so best to be ahead of the game and start developing new skills if this struck a cord with you.
It turns out the two competitors are in a heated battle of global domination. Ok, that might be a bit overboard but there is no doubt that Uber is facing off with Waymo in a $2.8T battle for dominance of the 'robotaxi' market.
Alphabet's Waymo service is ferrying families around Phoenix in driverless minivans. Uber is still struggling to understand why one of its self-driving cars killed a pedestrian without slowing or stopping, the first recorded case of someone being killed by a fully autonomous vehicle. Tesla's camera-based, semi-autonomous Autopilot system seems to be in the habit of slamming into parked firetrucks at freeway speeds.
Clearly there have been and will continue to be setbacks. I've talked to friends about this and they think that the horror scenes of iRobot where AI takes control of the cars and tries to kill Will Smith will be commonplace if this driverless car becomes our new reality. I'm still on the fence. In some ways I see it taking away freedoms that we desperately need to maintain. On the other hand with the number of drunk driving fatalities each year it seems like a life-saving effort. The philisophical dilemmas of our modern world are significant indeed!
But this future will be extremely lucrative. UBS analysts, in a recent note to clients, outlined the case for why the market for autonomous vehicles (AV) overall could be worth upwards of $2.8 trillion per year by 2030. That's in addition to global car sales, which today are worth about $2 trillion annually. The bulk of the revenues to be captured in this new ecosystem will be in "robotaxis," pitting Waymo against current ridehailing leader and VC-industry titan Uber.
But I guess it is settled, iRobot, Total Recall, here we come! Get ready to be driven around by robots and AI, it seems to be significantly in the cards if the technologists have their way!
If you've made it this far you've received an extensive education in ride-hailing services and what the future may hold for this industry. But what about the exciting world of disruption + ride hailing services?
If you have a dream or an idea to improve upon something that already exists you can make your dream a reality if you can get other people to share it with you and get some serious money and effort behind it!
That is where a new a startup called Cargo came from! Take a look at the picture and see if you can make out all the tasty snacks in the box! It turns out CarGo is making it easy for ride hailing service drivers to also make money running a convenience store! Disruption. Plain and simple.
Ride-hailing drivers who sign up with Cargo get shipments of the sort of things people would buy at a gas station (that’s where the people who drive you around in Ubers and Lyfts go to put gasoline in their vehicles): energy drinks, Advil, phone charging cables, candy bars, and so on. A passenger uses their smartphone to make a purchase, the driver hands it over (after parking, of course), and takes a cut of the sale. Cargo already operates in cities around the US, including New York, Chicago, DC, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Dallas. It’s aiming to reach 20,000 drivers this year.
What will they think of next? I've got to say this is incredibly dangerous for a guy like me. I'm trying to keep the snack and junk food to a minimum these days and having to stare at it as I get shuttled around town seems like a bit of torture on the side. But on the flip side, there may be an item that I really need and it would make my life so much easier if I didn't have to plan my day around a quick in and out to a 7-Eleven! Mixed feelings about this one indeed!
This week, Cargo took its first step overseas. Working with Uber competitor Grab in the company’s native Singapore, it launched a service called Grab&Go. Drivers who sell snacks and hand out free samples of beauty products, they say, can make nearly $200 a month on top of their regular earnings—and boost their ratings by delighting passengers with their oh-so-convenient wares.
This is outstanding news for drivers who have already decided to drive people around as a career anyways. They can now sell stuff to people as well and earn extra income! If I ever have a career crisis, this opportunity is looking more lucrative than ever. That is, until the robots take over!
Isn't it genius that you can get your ride home after a long night of drinking and partying while being offered magical cures Red Bulls and anti-hangover tablets?
“People are becoming passengers. What are they going to do with that time?” says James Bellefeuille, founder and COO of Vugo, a Minneapolis-based company that offers in-car entertainment for ride-hailing passengers via tablets mounted in the backseat.
Look at capitalism and how it operates! First came ride-hailing then came mobile convenience stores and a guy named James starts bragging about how passengers are actually great hostages to tempt with in-car entertainment! You just have to love it right?! No, we definitely do not but becoming more critical about these changes will most likely lead us all towards a better and happier future. We can protest these things if we are aware of them and resist collectively assuming we don't like them as a community.
I know this was a lot to take in and digest but as I've previously said in past articles, technology and distruptive services are evolving at an absolutely breakneck speed. Technology is becoming integrated with almost every facet of modern life but that doesn't mean we have to embrace it!
I would like to know how my fellow @ADSactly society members feel about ride-hailing services, mobile convenience stores and the possibility of a world full of robotic or AI drivers shuttling us around.
Do you use ride-hailing services? How would you compare them to the experiences you've had taking taxis?
Would you take advantage of a mobile convenience store if it was an option? How do you feel about robot drivers or AI controlled cars?
Would you feel safer being driven by a real human being?
Here's a chance for the @ADSactly community to leave their thoughts and opinions on this topic!
Thanks for reading.
In-text citations sources:
"The Dawn of Mobile Convenience Stores—and (Maybe) Free Rides" - WIRED
"So, What Is Uber?" - UberEstimate
"Lyft is redesigning its app to emphasize carpooling and mass transit" - The Verge
"Uber vs. Waymo in $2.8T battle for 'robotaxis'" - Pitchbook
Image Sources:
WIRED
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