Uber, Jump Bike
- Uber and Lyft are doing more than just app-based taxi rides.
- Both companies are investing in self-driving cars and healthcare.
- Uber, meanwhile, is rapidly growing its Uber Eats and Uber Freight businesses.
- We went through each company’s IPO documents to compile the definitive list of the other bets each ride-hailing company is taking.
Uber and Lyft have become synonymous with ride-hailing, but taxi rides are far from the companies’ only business bets.
Between the two, the companies are heavily invested in self-driving cars, food delivery, healthcare, bikes, scooters and more.
Hot on the heels of each company’s attention-grabbing initial public offerings earlier this year, we dove into each company’s freshly disclosed prospectuses to analyze just what other bets they were diving into — and how big those bets are.
Here’s everything Uber and Lyft are doing that isn’t ride-hailing:
Uber’s approach to self-driving cars
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Uber and Lyft are both rapidly investing in autonomous vehicles, but with very different approaches.
Uber is working on the technology through its Advanced Technologies Group, which employs more than 1,000 employees across three offices in San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Toronto.
"ATG has built over 250 self-driving vehicles, collected data from millions of autonomous vehicle testing miles, and completed tens of thousands of passenger trips," the company said in its IPO documents. "Along the way to a potential future autonomous vehicle world, we believe that there will be a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while Drivers continue to serve most consumer demand."
The company said it will continue partnering with original equipment manufacturers ("OEMs") and other suppliers, like Toyota and Denso (both of which invested in ATG, which is now a separate business entity, around the time of Uber’s IPO).
Lyft’s two-pronged approach to autonomy
Business Insider
Unlike Uber, Lyft is focusing more on partnerships with other companies than in-house development of self-driving cars. On the day of its first quarter earnings, for example, it announced that Waymo self-driving minivans would be available in the Lyft app in certain Arizona locations.
"We have two pieces of our autonomous strategy," Co-founder John Zimmer told analysts and investors on the earnings call. "One is first party, which is our Level 5 group. We believe we’re in a great position, given our platform, our access to data, and an amazing talented team to build our own self-driving components."
To date, the company has provided over 35,000 autonomous rides in Las Vegas as part of its partnership with Aptiv.
"Something that’s important to note is that those investments that we’re making today and our first-party system can benefit the existing business even before there’s autonomous vehicles through mapping a better ETAs and therefore a higher utilization and efficiency in the marketplace," he continued.
"But we are agnostic to where this technology comes from. And so therefore we have a third-party part of our strategy, and Waymo is a phenomenal partner with leading AV technology. And so it’s part of that two-pronged strategy, and it doesn’t affect the other relationships that we have. And you can expect more developments on both sides of that strategy."
Read more: Lyft executive suggests drivers become mechanics after they’re replaced by self-driving robo-taxis
Uber Eats
REUTERS/Jason Reed
Food delivery is one of Uber’s most quickly growing businesses. According to its IPO filings, Uber Eats has provided more than 15 million meals in the final quarter of 2018. The service has recruited over 220,000 restaurants in 500 cities worldwide, Uber said.
The company also utilizes virtual restaurants, or "dark kitchens," as they’re sometimes called, to cook and deliver meals. The only difference is you could never visit the establishment in person — it’s only for delivery meals.
Read more: An Uber Eats executive reveals the company’s surprising strategy for moving beyond taxi rides
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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Source: Business Insider – grapier@businessinsider.com (Graham Rapier)