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Disrupting the Disruptors: Can Nomad Rides Challenge Uber and Lyft?

With all of the driver pay issues surrounding Uber and Lyft, many drivers are wondering why there hasn’t been a competent challenger to Uber and Lyft. Recently, drivers reached out to us about a new company called Nomad Rides, which seeks to disrupt Uber and Lyft and take over as the truly driver-friendly company. We had RSG contributor Sergio Avedian take a look at Nomad, what it promises drivers, and the likelihood it will succeed below.

Nomad Rides is a new driver-centered rideshare company, whose intent is seemingly to overthrow Uber and Lyft by appealing to drivers, with a much more generous pay system than Uber/Lyft currently have. With driver pay and incentives getting cut what seems like every few months, there certainly is a lot of discontent to go around. I’m surprised a challenger to Uber and Lyft hasn’t arrived sooner! Is Nomad Rides the David that will take on the Goliath’s of the rideshare industry?

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How Many Uber Drivers Are There?

Have you ever wondered how many Uber and Lyft drivers are out there? We decided to do some research ourselves. Today, RSG contributor Melissa Berry answers the question of “how many Uber and Lyft drivers are there in the United States?” Plus, how many Uber drivers are there worldwide, and is Uber truly the leader in rideshare internationally?

If you’re a member of the media looking for a rideshare expert:

  • email Harry [at] TheRideshareGuy.com or
  • DM Harry on Twitter

Since 2014 we’ve been the biggest and most reputable rideshare source in the industry with 382,000 blog users and 603,000 pageviews per month.  Harry has appeared on ABC’s 20/20, CNBC, in The New York Times, and much more.

It seems like there are more rideshare drivers than ever on the roads these days, so it’s a question many of us wonder – how many Uber and Lyft drivers are out there? Whether you want to avoid the competition or use this info to hustle harder and beat that competition, today I’ll take the news that is out there about drivers and attempt to answer that question.

Have you ever wondered how many Uber drivers there are in the US? What about the world? We try to break down those numbers here -

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Would Uber and Lyft Really Pull Out of Chicago?

Update (6/20/16): Looks like Uber and Lyft may be safe for now.  Ald. Beale has agreed to ‘study’ the fingerprinting issue for 6 months and will not require rideshare services to fingerprint their drivers – for now.

This Wednesday, the Chicago City Council will vote on an ordinance that could force Uber and Lyft to pull out of the city indefinitely.  If this story sounds familiar, it should.  Over the past year, Uber and Lyft have waged regulatory battles in several high profile locales (New York, Broward County, etc), and neither company is currently operating in Austin due to a recent fingerprinting requirement imposed by the city council.

We actually traveled to Austin a couple weeks ago to see the situation first-hand, and now it looks like Chicago might be next.  Many municipalities have tried to impose stricter taxi-like regulations over the past year, and it’s been a huge sticking point for the TNCs.  In fact, anything that involves fingerprinting of drivers or impediments to on-boarding is likely to elicit pull-out threats from Uber and Lyft since these companies rely on being able to churn and burn through their workforce.  By Uber’s own admission, they lose half of all drivers after just 12 months and, when you factor in their growth, they need to hire at least 60,000 new drivers every single month (according to my calculations) just to run efficiently.

We've heard this before - would Uber and Lyft really leave Chicago? We cover the regulations in Chicago here.

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7 Things I Learned From Our Week In Austin

When Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin last month, they made it seem like the world was going to end without them.  And while there was tumult in the few weeks after their departure, no less than seven eight nine rideshare start-ups have since moved in to Austin to try and fill that void.

Last week, Christian and I headed to the capital of Texas to talk with local politicians, meet with some of the start-ups looking to take Uber/Lyft’s place and, of course, hear from drivers.  We learned a lot about the situation on the ground, and today I’m going to summarize it all.

Christian and I meeting with Austin Councilman Don Zimmerman

Christian and I meeting with Austin Councilman Don Zimmerman (photo cred: RSG Reader Anthony N)

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55 Rideshare Industry Experts Predict The Biggest Issues of 2016

Last year, I rounded up 43 industry experts and asked them about their outlooks for rideshare in 2015.  The responses we got were pretty impressive, and that post ended up being one of our top shared posts of all 2015.  It also turned out that a lot of those predictions came true.

It’s always fun to predict the future, and for this year’s round up I managed to get 55 rideshare industry experts that range from venture capitalists, CEOs, reporters, academics, start-up founders and bloggers to even a few drivers themselves.

My goal with these posts is to learn what others think are the most pertinent issues in the industry and expose their thinking to a whole new audience.  It’s a pretty good bet that the co-founder of a rideshare start-up is going to have a different outlook than an academic studying the industry.  But both parties have devoted a huge amount of time researching their respective fields and there’s a lot of knowledge that can be shared there.

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