11 ms·

Lyft adds a new app for drivers

171 points by wyndham 9y ago

bpicolo 9y ago
This could be a really good thing if you're an hour away from the airport where you have a morning flight, but a really bad thing if the driver decides that morning to not take you. :)
- aptwebapps 9y ago
  Presumably another driver would pick it up - it wouldn't just get dropped.
  - Paul-ish 9y ago
    That would require there to be another driver, which in a less populous area at 4AM might not be the case. It seems like there would need to be steep penalties on both parties if they cancel near the arranged time. Eg: Driver cancels 2 hours before pickup. Lyft penalizes driver x% of total fee, then uses that to "bid up" the price on that pickup to entice another driver to fulfill the request at the last minute. This has the potential to help attract drivers to go out of their way, which could help in less urban areas.
    - BurningFrog 9y ago
      I assume/hope the driver app has reminders and confirmations before the ride.
joelrunyon 9y ago
Anyone got a non-BI link?
- jnpatel 9y ago
  Here are the direct Lyft pages on the two new driver features mentioned in the article: Scheduled Rides [0] and Power Zones [1]. [0]: https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-scheduled-rides https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-scheduled-rides [1]: https://thehub.lyft.com/power-zones/ https://thehub.lyft.com/power-zones/
dave84 9y ago
Interesting, there's obviously a demand for this feature but I wonder if it will change the way the end user books rides substantially or if its just a nice to have.
pfarnsworth 9y ago
I don't think scheduling a ride a few days in advance actually helps the drivers. One of the best things about Uber or Lyft for the drivers is that they don't have to think about scheduling, they're told exactly where to drive. If they have a scheduled ride and they forget about it, or they're stuck waiting around to make that ride and lose business, that doesn't seem like it will be popular. One big thing that Uber needs to fix is the incentive scheme. One of the Uber drivers I talked to said she hated how they were, in my words, gamified into earning their incentive bonuses. And the incentive bonuses change every time, so it makes it hard for them to keep track. That's something Uber needs to change in order to increase driver satisfaction, making it clearer and more consistent on how to earn the incentives which is where the drivers make more. I don't see how Lyft's "Power Zones" are any different from Uber showing where surge is occurring, but if it works, then great.
- jngreenlee 9y ago
  This. I don't think the feature is a game changer for anyone. The same end-user capability exists.
- jpalomaki 9y ago
  This could be something for Lyft drivers people who don't drive so regularly. You could for example spot gigs which you can handle while riding to work. If you know day or two beforehand, you can then adjust your schedule accordingly.
- giarc 9y ago
  I think the key to the article is that when the ride is booked in advance, the driver sees the route and destination. A big compliant from drivers is that you accept a ride and you don't know if you are going 1 mile down the road or 100 miles to the middle of no where. Now the driver can see before accepting the ride (for these advanced booked trips).
- clarkm 9y ago
  Think about potential drivers in rural areas. I can see this being a key feature that helps Lyft expand into areas with low population density and sparse ridership. Drivers don't want to turn on the app and wait all day -- they'd rather schedule that trip in advance.
yiggydyang 9y ago
Grrrr... BI no longer works when you have an ad blocker installed.
- ProAm 9y ago
  Which ad blocker? Im running uBlock Orgin and ghostery and it worked fine
- _rpd 9y ago
  It works with uBlock Origin with "Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek" checked under "3rd-party filters"
  - yiggydyang 9y ago
    Suite! Thanks
- draw_down 9y ago
  No great loss, I'd say.
- adsims2001 9y ago
  It works pretty well if you turn off JavaScript entirely. I use the "Toggle JavaScript" Chrome extension (by "dsmith" in the chrome web store) for that.
Kiro 9y ago
So this is of course anecdotal but the only time I book taxis is when it's very important I get somewhere in time, like catching a plane early in the morning. Given the nature of Uber/Lyft it would take a lot before I would trust them with this.
- jngreenlee 9y ago
  So this is of course anecdotal but the only time I use Lyft (I avoid Uber) when it's very important I get somewhere in time, like catching a plane early in the morning. Given the nature of Taxis, it would take a lot before I would trust Taxis with this. Edit: The last time I booked a taxi it was 2-3 years ago for a 4am ride to PDX. I booked two to be safe, only one came anyways.
  - fanzhang 9y ago
    My last experience with a taxi was going to Logan airport. I called one; dispatcher said it'd come in 10 minutes. Never came 15 minutes later. Called another, same thing. Ended up flagging a taxi down (taxis rarely drove by where I lived but I was in luck (?) after 30 minutes of waiting on the curb).
  - rjuyal 9y ago
    I am a frequent user of Uber. I don't use Lyft at all. I don't see any reason to use Lyft over uber. It's price estimation is wrong. Uber says $39 for airport, Lyft says $35 - $46 for airport. Estimated time of arrival is also wrong. Uber says it will take 4 mins for driver to come while Lyft will say drive will reach in one minute. I mean I can see on the map there is no way driver can reach in one minute. Whenever someone say he uses Lyft over uber and I ask the reason. They always says they don't like Uber because they can't tip the driver. I understand there is tipping culture in USA so that could be reason to prefer Lyft. Can I ask why would you prefer Lyft over Uber?
    - jngreenlee 9y ago
      The culture of Lyft (which will merge with the culture of Uber over time I believe) has been more friendly, more conversational where I live. I always sit up front and talk with the person, learn what else they do, how long they've lived in the area. When I try this with Uber (esp in SF), they often show me a thumb pointing towards the backseat instead!
e-sushi 9y ago
Let's see how that goes...
jswny 9y ago
I think this is a very good idea! I know many people around where I live who use local Uber drivers whom they trust to schedule early-morning rides to the airport and things like that. The rider will have the driver come to his/her house at the specified time, and then the driver and the rider will both turn on Uber and the rider's request will be filled by that driver because nobody else is nearby that early. This would would make it much easier to do something like that for both the rider and the driver, and I see this as an important use case because it's really the only remaining one which many people would prefer to use a car service or taxi service than Uber/Lyft. It's also much more profitable for the driver so drivers will like this a lot. Great move on Lyft's part, maybe they could consider allowing riders to directly send requests to certain drivers. The point here being that riders using Lyft like a car service have drivers they trust to come on time, not cancel, etc. which are the only potential problems I see here.
- kcanini 9y ago
  If they're going to the trouble of pre-arranging the ride, why don't they just use cash/Venmo/Square, and keep Uber's cut of the fare?
  - will_pseudonym 9y ago
    That's what I would do with my driver. She'd arrive, and I would look up an Uber cost estimate, and then pay her cash for the average amount I was quoted. I also could ask her to run errands for me, using this same system.
    - giarc 9y ago
      It seems like there is no benefit to you at all. Paying the average amount means you're paying more than some fares. By paying cash, you lose out on all insurance in cash of an accident.
      - eigenvector 9y ago
        The benefit is that you can deal with a trusted driver rather than someone that takes 3 wrong turns on the way there then misses the exit for the airport.
sverige 9y ago
As a rider, I haven't noticed the Lyft app to be slow or especially bloated, so it will be interesting to see if it is significantly faster once the update pushes through with the driver portion removed.
- dfinninger 9y ago
  I doubt it. If you aren't a driver I think it would be senseless to be running driver code at the same time as rider code. Maybe a little less disk (flash?), but I'm not certain. I'm neither a mobile dev or a Lyft employee.
cjiang 9y ago
Chinese Didi had it long ago...
throwaway3589 9y ago
Why is this front page worthy? Uber has had these features for a while now. As someone else mentioned, Didi has had these features too. 71 upvotes so far. This just further reinforces my view that there is an active voting ring on HN manipulating Uber and Lyft stories in Lyft's favor, which is ironic since many of the comments on such stories talk about Uber being shady. Throwaway because I fully expect the voting ring people to downvote this. Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy.
- msoad 9y ago
  law of large numbers economics
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
  I dislike the hyper-hatred against Uber that has become fashionable in these parts myself, but I don't think there's any need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain this post getting to the front page.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy. We don't owe you an explanation, but I'll offer one anyway: I upvoted because it's a story about a popular tech company, and the way they're trying to improve their offering for their semi-employees. Why wouldn't I upvote this?
- Fomite 9y ago
  Because the mechanics of how these companies make these decisions, insight into a job I don't do, and competition in a space where, a year ago, I had simply assumed Uber won was interesting. If I'm part of an organized voting ring, I didn't get the memo.
- dang 9y ago
  Internet users are much too quick to interpret disagreement by others as nefarious bad faith. Please don't comment in that spirit here, unless you have evidence of abuse (in which case please send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com, so we can look into it). The overwhelming majority of the time, it's just other users who have different views than you do.
inverse_pi 9y ago
Everyone loves the underdog
dnautics 9y ago
With the caveat that I don't work for Lyft DevOps or anything (I only used to be a driver way back when)... If you need to make a critical update to the driver side your code is solidly firewalled from having to pass integration tests with the passenger side, and there's a possibility that some problems bleed through between the two different parts of the app. In the early days, there were a few updates where such things leaked through (if I remember correctly, there was one version update where the passengers accidentally could see the primetime map). Quite frankly, I'm suprised they hadn't done it sooner.

171 points by wyndham 9y ago

This could be a really good thing if you're an hour away from the airport where you have a morning flight, but a really bad thing if the driver decides that morning to not take you. :)

aptwebapps 9y ago
Presumably another driver would pick it up - it wouldn't just get dropped.
- Paul-ish 9y ago
  That would require there to be another driver, which in a less populous area at 4AM might not be the case. It seems like there would need to be steep penalties on both parties if they cancel near the arranged time. Eg: Driver cancels 2 hours before pickup. Lyft penalizes driver x% of total fee, then uses that to "bid up" the price on that pickup to entice another driver to fulfill the request at the last minute. This has the potential to help attract drivers to go out of their way, which could help in less urban areas.
  - BurningFrog 9y ago
    I assume/hope the driver app has reminders and confirmations before the ride.

joelrunyon 9y ago

Anyone got a non-BI link?

jnpatel 9y ago
Here are the direct Lyft pages on the two new driver features mentioned in the article: Scheduled Rides [0] and Power Zones [1]. [0]: https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-scheduled-rides https://blog.lyft.com/posts/introducing-scheduled-rides [1]: https://thehub.lyft.com/power-zones/ https://thehub.lyft.com/power-zones/

dave84 9y ago

Interesting, there's obviously a demand for this feature but I wonder if it will change the way the end user books rides substantially or if its just a nice to have.

pfarnsworth 9y ago

I don't think scheduling a ride a few days in advance actually helps the drivers. One of the best things about Uber or Lyft for the drivers is that they don't have to think about scheduling, they're told exactly where to drive. If they have a scheduled ride and they forget about it, or they're stuck waiting around to make that ride and lose business, that doesn't seem like it will be popular. One big thing that Uber needs to fix is the incentive scheme. One of the Uber drivers I talked to said she hated how they were, in my words, gamified into earning their incentive bonuses. And the incentive bonuses change every time, so it makes it hard for them to keep track. That's something Uber needs to change in order to increase driver satisfaction, making it clearer and more consistent on how to earn the incentives which is where the drivers make more. I don't see how Lyft's "Power Zones" are any different from Uber showing where surge is occurring, but if it works, then great.

jngreenlee 9y ago
This. I don't think the feature is a game changer for anyone. The same end-user capability exists.
jpalomaki 9y ago
This could be something for Lyft drivers people who don't drive so regularly. You could for example spot gigs which you can handle while riding to work. If you know day or two beforehand, you can then adjust your schedule accordingly.
giarc 9y ago
I think the key to the article is that when the ride is booked in advance, the driver sees the route and destination. A big compliant from drivers is that you accept a ride and you don't know if you are going 1 mile down the road or 100 miles to the middle of no where. Now the driver can see before accepting the ride (for these advanced booked trips).
clarkm 9y ago
Think about potential drivers in rural areas. I can see this being a key feature that helps Lyft expand into areas with low population density and sparse ridership. Drivers don't want to turn on the app and wait all day -- they'd rather schedule that trip in advance.

yiggydyang 9y ago

Grrrr... BI no longer works when you have an ad blocker installed.

ProAm 9y ago
Which ad blocker? Im running uBlock Orgin and ghostery and it worked fine
_rpd 9y ago
It works with uBlock Origin with "Anti-Adblock Killer | Reek" checked under "3rd-party filters"
- yiggydyang 9y ago
  Suite! Thanks
draw_down 9y ago
No great loss, I'd say.
adsims2001 9y ago
It works pretty well if you turn off JavaScript entirely. I use the "Toggle JavaScript" Chrome extension (by "dsmith" in the chrome web store) for that.

Kiro 9y ago

So this is of course anecdotal but the only time I book taxis is when it's very important I get somewhere in time, like catching a plane early in the morning. Given the nature of Uber/Lyft it would take a lot before I would trust them with this.

jngreenlee 9y ago
So this is of course anecdotal but the only time I use Lyft (I avoid Uber) when it's very important I get somewhere in time, like catching a plane early in the morning. Given the nature of Taxis, it would take a lot before I would trust Taxis with this. Edit: The last time I booked a taxi it was 2-3 years ago for a 4am ride to PDX. I booked two to be safe, only one came anyways.
- fanzhang 9y ago
  My last experience with a taxi was going to Logan airport. I called one; dispatcher said it'd come in 10 minutes. Never came 15 minutes later. Called another, same thing. Ended up flagging a taxi down (taxis rarely drove by where I lived but I was in luck (?) after 30 minutes of waiting on the curb).
- rjuyal 9y ago
  I am a frequent user of Uber. I don't use Lyft at all. I don't see any reason to use Lyft over uber. It's price estimation is wrong. Uber says $39 for airport, Lyft says $35 - $46 for airport. Estimated time of arrival is also wrong. Uber says it will take 4 mins for driver to come while Lyft will say drive will reach in one minute. I mean I can see on the map there is no way driver can reach in one minute. Whenever someone say he uses Lyft over uber and I ask the reason. They always says they don't like Uber because they can't tip the driver. I understand there is tipping culture in USA so that could be reason to prefer Lyft. Can I ask why would you prefer Lyft over Uber?
  - jngreenlee 9y ago
    The culture of Lyft (which will merge with the culture of Uber over time I believe) has been more friendly, more conversational where I live. I always sit up front and talk with the person, learn what else they do, how long they've lived in the area. When I try this with Uber (esp in SF), they often show me a thumb pointing towards the backseat instead!

e-sushi 9y ago

Let's see how that goes...

jswny 9y ago

I think this is a very good idea! I know many people around where I live who use local Uber drivers whom they trust to schedule early-morning rides to the airport and things like that. The rider will have the driver come to his/her house at the specified time, and then the driver and the rider will both turn on Uber and the rider's request will be filled by that driver because nobody else is nearby that early. This would would make it much easier to do something like that for both the rider and the driver, and I see this as an important use case because it's really the only remaining one which many people would prefer to use a car service or taxi service than Uber/Lyft. It's also much more profitable for the driver so drivers will like this a lot. Great move on Lyft's part, maybe they could consider allowing riders to directly send requests to certain drivers. The point here being that riders using Lyft like a car service have drivers they trust to come on time, not cancel, etc. which are the only potential problems I see here.

kcanini 9y ago
If they're going to the trouble of pre-arranging the ride, why don't they just use cash/Venmo/Square, and keep Uber's cut of the fare?
- will_pseudonym 9y ago
  That's what I would do with my driver. She'd arrive, and I would look up an Uber cost estimate, and then pay her cash for the average amount I was quoted. I also could ask her to run errands for me, using this same system.
  - giarc 9y ago
    It seems like there is no benefit to you at all. Paying the average amount means you're paying more than some fares. By paying cash, you lose out on all insurance in cash of an accident.
    - eigenvector 9y ago
      The benefit is that you can deal with a trusted driver rather than someone that takes 3 wrong turns on the way there then misses the exit for the airport.

sverige 9y ago

As a rider, I haven't noticed the Lyft app to be slow or especially bloated, so it will be interesting to see if it is significantly faster once the update pushes through with the driver portion removed.

dfinninger 9y ago
I doubt it. If you aren't a driver I think it would be senseless to be running driver code at the same time as rider code. Maybe a little less disk (flash?), but I'm not certain. I'm neither a mobile dev or a Lyft employee.

cjiang 9y ago

Chinese Didi had it long ago...

throwaway3589 9y ago

Why is this front page worthy? Uber has had these features for a while now. As someone else mentioned, Didi has had these features too. 71 upvotes so far. This just further reinforces my view that there is an active voting ring on HN manipulating Uber and Lyft stories in Lyft's favor, which is ironic since many of the comments on such stories talk about Uber being shady. Throwaway because I fully expect the voting ring people to downvote this. Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy.

msoad 9y ago
law of large numbers economics
kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
I dislike the hyper-hatred against Uber that has become fashionable in these parts myself, but I don't think there's any need to resort to conspiracy theories to explain this post getting to the front page.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy. We don't owe you an explanation, but I'll offer one anyway: I upvoted because it's a story about a popular tech company, and the way they're trying to improve their offering for their semi-employees. Why wouldn't I upvote this?
Fomite 9y ago
Because the mechanics of how these companies make these decisions, insight into a job I don't do, and competition in a space where, a year ago, I had simply assumed Uber won was interesting. If I'm part of an organized voting ring, I didn't get the memo.
dang 9y ago
Internet users are much too quick to interpret disagreement by others as nefarious bad faith. Please don't comment in that spirit here, unless you have evidence of abuse (in which case please send it to us at hn@ycombinator.com, so we can look into it). The overwhelming majority of the time, it's just other users who have different views than you do.

inverse_pi 9y ago

Everyone loves the underdog

dnautics 9y ago

With the caveat that I don't work for Lyft DevOps or anything (I only used to be a driver way back when)... If you need to make a critical update to the driver side your code is solidly firewalled from having to pass integration tests with the passenger side, and there's a possibility that some problems bleed through between the two different parts of the app. In the early days, there were a few updates where such things leaked through (if I remember correctly, there was one version update where the passengers accidentally could see the primetime map). Quite frankly, I'm suprised they hadn't done it sooner.