This Week in Rideshare: IPO, Delivery, and Prop 22.
Airbnb goes IPO, Lyft gets hungry, and Prop 22 goes national. LegalRideshare breaks it down.
MONDAY 11/16/20
Airbnb has officially filed for IPO status even as bookings sank. CNET reported:
Airbnb said bookings on its platform fell by 72% in April from the year before. But, in June through September, the company said it began to see a rebound with bookings down around 20% from the year prior. To mitigate those losses, Airbnb laid off 1,900 employees, 25% of its staff, in May. It also raised $2 billion in debt funding in April.
TUESDAY 11/17/20
It looks like Uber may be ditching its self-driving division. New York Post explains:
Just last year, Uber’s ATG had raised $1 billion at a $7.25 billion valuation. But the business arm has struggled to make meaningful advances, and faces intense competition from Alphabet-owned Waymo and Apple’s autonomous vehicle efforts.
WEDNESDAY 11/18/20
Lyft cranks up its safety features after partnering with ADT. The Rideshare Guy explains:
Lyft is stepping up their commitment to safety for drivers and passengers alike by rolling out Emergency Help, supported by ADT to 100% of drivers and riders nationwide on Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2020.
Within the Lyft driver app, a driver would simply click the down arrow in the upper right-hand corner, choose “Get emergency help” from that menu, and swipe to activate to have ADT call them while notifying 911.
THURSDAY 11/19/20
It looks like Lyft is getting hungry…for its own Uber Eats. Sfist.com explains:
But Lyft thinks they have a solution in offering lower delivery fees, or maybe even no fees at all. Restaurant trade publication Restaurant Dive quotes Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer as saying, “What’s happening to restaurants in the time like this, when they sell food on a platform, like Uber Eats, they get charged 20% to 30%, they lose 20% to 30% of their revenue to that platform.” Zimmer offered little detail, though, on how Lyft’s food delivery knockoff would be cheaper.
FRIDAY 11/20/20
After the successful push for Prop-22 in California, gig companies are taking the fight national. CNET explains:
Spokespeople for Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash confirmed to CNET that the companies are planning to bring their Proposition 22 model nationwide, saying that’s what gig workers want.
The emails to drivers like Schaal represent just one element of Uber’s broader strategy to go countrywide. In August, the company published a white paper outlining “priorities for industry and government action” on gig worker classification state by state. That same month, Uber released findings from a nationwide survey it commissioned on what drivers and voters think about workers being classified as independent contractors. The company has also hired a record number of federal lobbyists and created an information portal for drivers titled “Together, we can reinvent independent work."
LegalRideshare is the first law firm in the United States to focus exclusively on Uber®, Lyft®, gig workers, delivery and e-scooter accidents and injuries.
