This Week In Rideshare: Undocumented, Seniors and Waymo.

Immigrants get banned, seniors get accounts and Waymo beats Lyft. LegalRideshare breaks it down.

UNDOCUMENTED DRIVERS GET BANNED

The immigrant drivers who helped Uber succeed are now getting banned. Los Angeles Public Press reported:

Pedro drove for Uber and Lyft for about four years, he said, and completed about 22,000 trips. Like many undocumented people in California and across the country, he worked for rideshare companies as the app-based gig economy started to take off.

While they are barred from working for some of the larger tech companies, including Uber and Lyft, undocumented rideshare and delivery drivers who work for smaller competitors would be eligible for union and bargaining rights as independent contractors under AB 1340.

It is difficult to quantify how many undocumented workers might benefit from the potential passage of AB 1340. The exact number of undocumented workers in rideshare is unknown because most companies don’t track or disclose immigration status, labor researchers said. But according to a 2020 report by the National Employment Law Project, an estimated 56% of all drivers in the gig economy are immigrants of various statuses.

UBER SENIOR ACCOUNTS

Uber is launching senior accounts. The Verge reported:

Last month, Uber started testing new accounts for senior citizens, with a larger typeface, fewer buttons, and easier-to-follow instructions. Now, the company is ready to roll out its new senior accounts to the wider world.

The company sees senior accounts as a necessary product in a world where one out of six people will be 60 years old or over by 2030. And it’s an acknowledgement that more seniors are using technology that often wasn’t built with their demographic in mind.

In addition to a larger font and a more streamlined design, the accounts also include saved destinations for easy ride requests and expanded payment options for customers who want to use a Medicare flex card.

Seniors can also designate a family member or caregiver who can book rides, change settings, and contact drivers if need be. And they can opt into sharing their location so the aforementioned caregivers and family members can track their movements.

WAYMO BEATS LYFT

Waymo has surpassed Lyft. Underscore_SF reported:

According to YipitData, a data and analytics firm based out of New York City, Waymo’s gross bookings from August of 2023 to April of this year have surpassed Lyft’s in market share. The twenty-month data analysis highlighted Uber’s dominance in San Francisco ridership — well over 50% of all trips booked via a ridesharing application were done on Uber throughout the analysis — but showed, perhaps more surprisingly, how quickly Waymo clambered into the commonplace. Waymo is also currently beating Lyft, a company that has operated rides in San Francisco since 2012, in total gross bookings.

In a staggeringly short amount of time, Waymo, which is about to celebrate its first anniversary of city-wide ride-hailing operations, has gone from effectively 0% market share of bookings in San Francisco to over 25%. Lyft has continuously gathered fewer bookings than Uber, but still managed to hold onto a roughly 30% market share since 2023.

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