Last week, Lyft suddenly announced that its cofounders, president Logan Green and CEO John Zimmer, would step away from the ride-hailing company after 11 years. David Risher, a former executive at Microsoft and Amazon who has been on Lyft’s board since 2021, will take the helm later this month.
Lyft’s C-suite shuffle was sudden, but hardly surprising. For one thing, tech companies in their teens and tweens seem to be entering a founder flop era. Twitch’s Emmett Shear, Instacart’s Apoorva Mehta, Pinterest’s Ben Silbermann, and Peloton’s John Foley all recently bid adieu. But Lyft in particular is struggling. It hasn’t turned a profit. It’s losing market share to Uber. It laid off 13 percent of its staff last fall. Its stock price is down nearly 90 percent since it went public in 2019.
And yet the exits of Green and Zimmer say something about how tech industry vibes have shifted since the early 2010’s, when young-ish dudes were raising mountains of cash to disrupt, well, everything.
In the beginning, Lyft’s primary offering was … vibes. Travis Kalanick’s Uber was cutthroat, modeled after pricier black car services and founded because Kalanick and his crew aspired to be “ballers.” Lyft, by contrast, recruited anyone with a license, a vehicle, and a willingness to affix a pink fuzzy mustache to their car and greet strangers with a fist bump, welcoming passengers into their front seats. It was Lyft that piloted the peer-to-peer model of ride hailing, the idea that anyone could become a taxicab driver if they downloaded the right app.
Zimmer loved to wax on about the city-shaping potential of the service. An urban planning class at Cornell University, he often said, had opened his eyes to the corrosive effects of the automobile on city life—the traffic, the smog, the too many parking lots taking up space that could become parks or playgrounds or housing. Lyft and services like it, the theory went, could help many people escape the tyranny of car ownership by letting them use other peoples’ vehicles occasionally instead. When Lyft acquired America’s major bikeshare operator in 2018, it pitched that transaction as another way to help cities.
It was a heart-warming story that got a credibility boost from the public implosion of Uber in 2017. But it didn’t quite work out. The ride-sharing concept Lyft first proved out fed the growth of the gig economy, which has some serious flaws. We are still learning about the complicated effects of decoupling service work from benefits like health care and sick pay.
Meanwhile, ride-hailing seems to have actually increased traffic in cities. And that killing car ownership thing? Just a few months ago, Lyft rolled out services to help car owners book parking and vehicle maintenance. How Lyft fits into anyone’s urban planning syllabus is less clear-cut than Zimmer might have hoped.
When I spoke last week to Risher, Lyft’s new CEO, it was clear the vibes-based strategy has given way to the realities of turning a failing enterprise around. Gone were some of the glossier marketing concepts; in were the brass tacks. “I feel a real energy around saying, ‘let's really focus on our rideshare business,’” Risher told me. “Let's pick people up on time. Let's give them a good rate, so they don't defect to Uber. Let's drop them off where they say they need to go.”
When I asked Risher to name a distraction that had no place in the new model, he highlighted Shared Rides (formerly known at Lyft Line), the service that offers users cheaper rates in exchange for sharing a car with a few other travelers. The shared option went away at the start of the pandemic, but it has returned in a handful of US cities.
Risher said he didn’t quite know enough about Lyft’s bike- and scooter-sharing services to comment on their future—he starts his CEO job on April 17, so he has time to study up—but he said the idea is to take “people who get introduced to Lyft through a bike ride and figure out a way to get them over to our rideshare side.”
And as for Lyft’s role in making cities into happier, greener places—that cornerstone of its foundational myth? “Whether or not we play a big role, or a medium, or a small role in that, I think is to be determined,” Risher said.
In the current climate, money no longer runs like water at ride-hailing companies. Whether for good or ill, Lyft and its ilk have changed the world. But can the company stay in business?
In 2014, WIRED writer Jason Tanz went long on what we then called the “sharing economy” and the amazing feat pulled off by then-new startups like Airbnb and Lyft: getting shifty-eyed Americans to trust each other with their stuff.
Tanz visits with the vanguards of the concept: a yoga instructor turned Lyft driver, a San Franciscan who rents his car out during the week, and a bevy of tech executives. It’s striking to me how the conversation around these firms has changed in less than a decade. The “sharing economy” is looking a little less like a society-shaking development and more like the old concept of freelance service workers selling their time and labor by the hour, but with a new, internet-y twist. In retrospect, the talk of upgrading society feels a bit silly:
No wonder some of the loftier sharing-economy executives see their mission as not just building a business but fundamentally rewiring our relationships with one another. Much as the traditional internet helped strangers meet and communicate online, they say, the modern internet can link individuals and communities in the physical world. “The extent to which people are connected to each other is lower than what humans need,” NYU professor Arun Sundararajan says. “Part of the appeal of the sharing economy is helping to bridge that gap.”
Lyft cofounder John Zimmer goes so far as to liken it to time he spent on the Oglala Sioux reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. “Their sense of community, of connection to each other and to their land, made me feel more happy and alive than I’ve ever felt before,” he says. “I think people are craving real human interaction—it’s like an instinct. We now have the opportunity to use technology to help us get there.”
Sam writes: I’ve heard so much about US tax credits for electric vehicles. But I’m not in the market for an electric car. I’m in the market for an electric bike. Are there any tax credits available for me?
Sam! Thanks for this great question! You’re right that there’s been lots of talk about tax credits for electric vehicles. The federal government just took a big step in creating a new program that will give some Americans up to $7,500 in tax credits if they buy a qualifying plug-in. Plus, some states and municipalities have their own incentive programs. But ebikes, I’m sorry to say, have not gotten the same support. This bums me out!
Ebikes use electric batteries and motors to give riders a bit of extra pep and so allow more people to ride longer than your conventional two-wheeler. These hybrid bikes have great potential to reduce emissions, cut down on the number of cars needed per household, and just make people happier. Biking is fun! (It might also save your skin when the Big One finally hits.) Ebikes are also costly, between $1,000 for a basic model all the way up to five figures.
But Sam—there is hope. Denver ran an extremely popular ebike rebate program last year that many cities and states are trying to emulate. And just last month, a group of US representatives and one senator introduced the Ebike Act. The law would create a tax credit for income-qualified Americans and would cover 30 percent of an ebike’s cost, up to $1,500. If this interests you, Sam, contact your local representative.
You can submit questions to mail@wired.com. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.
From Alaska, news is that the thawing of permafrost kicks off a horrific cycle of Earth-warming destruction: Released methane raises global temperatures, which in turn thaws more permafrost, which releases more methane, which … you get it. Researchers are trying to model how this happens so they can tell us what to expect. Hey, at least they’re working somewhere beautiful.
On fixing and family, and what a 1969 Dodge Travco motorhome taught one writer about self-reliance—and when to ask for help.
Subscription fees are coming for us all, including you, used car owners.
Tips to help make ChatGPT actually useful in your life.
A new take on the birds and the bees: In a first, monkeys got pregnant with “synthetic” embryos created in the lab.
