Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Uber and Lyft are pulling their services out of Minneapolis after the city council passed an ordinance that will increase drivers’ pay. Both companies say they will no longer offer ridesharing services in the city when the ordinance goes into effect on May 1st. The ordinance, which guarantees drivers a minimum rate of $1.40 per mile and 51 cents per minute while carrying a rider, was first passed last week but later vetoed by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. The City Council voted 10–3 to override the veto on Thursday. Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin calls the ..read more

Illustration by Erik Carter The many, many missed deadlines for a fully autonomous vehicular future. {props.credit ..read more

Lyft is expanding Women Plus Connect, an in-app feature that matches women and nonbinary drivers with women and nonbinary riders, to all US cities. The rideshare service initially launched the initiative in five cities last fall, with the goal of both improving safety and recruiting more female and nonbinary users. Over 2.4 million riders have activated Women Plus Connect since its rollout, according to Lyft’s press materials. Drivers aren’t required to participate in Women Plus Connect if they don’t want to, and if no nearby passengers matching the profile are available, the app will match w ..read more

Image: Noam Galai/Getty Images for Uber Eats In his State of the City speech Thursday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that Uber and Lyft will be required to be zero emission by 2030. The decision by one of the world’s largest markets for app-based ridehailing has the potential to affect an estimated 100,000 for-hire vehicles. Adams said the move will build on efforts his administration has made to electrify the city’s fleet of vehicles while installing charging infrastructure to power those vehicles throughout the five boroughs. The mayor will likely implement his plan through the ci ..read more

Lyft drivers can get cash for driving an EV. Lyft, which has said it wants “100 percent” of the vehicles operating on its platform to be electric by 2030, is offering a new slate of incentives to drivers to get them to ditch their polluting, gas-powered vehicles for ones with zero tailpipe emissions. Starting today, Lyft drivers in California who use an EV are eligible to receive a bonus of $150 if they complete 50 trips in a week — which translates to an extra $3 per trip. Drivers will need to register their EVs on Lyft’s app before the end of 2023 in order to qualify for the bonus. And they ..read more

Ricardo Tomás / The Verge An investigation from The Markup found that Uber is slow to respond to law enforcement requests, leaving drivers vulnerable to repeated attacks. In St. Louis, a narrow and quiet street shadowed with trees has haunted Brian Blagoue since the spring of 2021. It’s where two passengers carjacked him at gunpoint while he was working as a full-time Uber driver. Three weeks later, police found a Lyft driver shot dead in the driver’s seat of his car in the exact same location. It all started when Blagoue set out driving around noon on March 25th, he said. As he headed downtow ..read more

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images Lyft is partnering with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling company founded by a former Tesla executive, to ensure its fleet of shared e-bikes and scooters have a second life. It’s a noteworthy deal considering Lyft’s status as the largest electric bike-share operator in North America thanks to its bike-share business, including the extremely popular Citi Bike in New York City. The company claims that Citi Bike was the “25th most-ridden transit network in the United States.” Redwood Materials was founded in 2017 by ..read more

Motional Motional, the autonomous vehicle joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, is bringing its robotaxis to Los Angeles, where they will be available to hail through the Lyft app. The service is comprised of Motional’s fleet of Hyundai Ioniq 5 electric vehicles, which will be fully autonomous at the time of launch and not require a human safety driver behind the wheel. The company would not say when exactly the service will go live, though. “We plan to reveal timing when we are closer to launch,” a Motional spokesperson said. Previously, Motional said it wouldn’t deploy fully autonomous ve ..read more

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Lyft is laying off 13 percent of its workforce in the second round of major cuts to hit the ride-hailing company this year. The layoffs, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal, are expected to affect hundreds of roles. Lyft has more than 4,000 employees, which does not include its drivers. In an email posted on the company’s website, Lyft CEO Logan Green and president John Zimmer cited “a probable recession sometime in the next year” and rising ride-share insurance costs as among the reasons for the layoffs. Lyft’s president cited “a probab ..read more

Motional’s all-electric, autonomous Hyundai vehicles are available on the Lyft app in Las Vegas. | Image: Motional A new robotaxi service has officially launched for public use in Las Vegas. It’s being run by Lyft and an autonomous vehicle company called Motional and is a prelude to a fully driverless service that is set to launch in the city in 2023. Motional, which is a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, has been testing its autonomous vehicles in Las Vegas through a joint partnership with Lyft for over four years now. The testing began as a weeklong pilot between Aptiv and Lyft during ..read more