Waymo is quietly eating into rideshare, and drivers are feeling it. California’s drivers just pulled off the biggest union drive in U.S. history, only to find robotaxis blunting their leverage. Uber’s COO floats a future with fewer employees, then hedges. Kalanick says he has no regrets about the Lyft deal that got away. We break it all down for you.
Waymo Is Taking a Real Bite Out of Rideshare, and Drivers Feel It in Their Hours
SOURCE – Business Insider
According to data from Yipit, Waymo now accounts for roughly 15 to 16 percent of gross bookings in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. A Wharton professor who studies the gig economy says that volume is a serious shock to the driver labor market. He says the catch is that it will not look like a wave of layoffs. Because driver supply is flexible, the earliest damage shows up as lower utilization: longer waits between rides, fewer trips per hour, and more unpaid time repositioning the car.
- Yipit pegs Waymo at 15 percent of gross bookings in San Francisco and Los Angeles and 16 percent in Phoenix as of June, down slightly from January but still holding in the mid-teens even as Waymo expands into new areas.
- Gridwise data last year showed hourly driver wages fell in Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco, the metros where Waymo runs, while the national median rose about 1 percent. Researchers stopped short of pinning the drop on robotaxis.
- Uber says it is recruiting fewer drivers in some AV cities, and researchers warn the real effects are hard to track because drivers are contractors, so displacement surfaces as fewer hours worked versus jobs lost.
Uber’s COO Says AI Could Mean Fewer Employees, Then Changes Answer
SOURCE – Business Insider
In a podcast interview, Uber President and COO Andrew Macdonald said the company will have fewer employees in five years, then walked it back. His point: AI can already do much of the producing work, customer support, sales, analytics, and report and dashboard generation, and those functions are first in line for automation and eventual partial replacement. The hedge is that past predictions of AI-driven job cuts have not held up, and Uber’s own head count is up more than 54 percent over five years.
- Macdonald singled out customer support, sales, and content and analytics roles as the teams with disproportionate head count that lend themselves to AI augmentation and, eventually, partial replacement.
- Uber has about 36,600 employees. In July it cut roughly 10 percent of its community operations team, saying the move was meant to simplify operations and embrace AI.
- He walked back his viral May comments about weak AI returns, saying Uber is seeing real payback in areas like faster financial forecasting, but that turning time saved into head-count cuts is hard because a new task tends to fill the gap.
Drivers Won a 12-Year Fight to Unionize, Right as Robots Took the Wheel
SOURCE – The San Francisco Standard
California’s 350,000 Uber and Lyft drivers just formed the California Gig Workers Union, what labor leaders are calling the biggest single unionization effort in U.S. history. But the timing is brutal. A union’s most powerful weapon is the strike, and growing robotaxi fleets from Waymo, Zoox, and Uber’s own partnerships blunt that leverage.
- Gig-work researcher Veena Dubal warns the union has less power than it is touting, because Uber is building competing AV capacity through Lucid and Nuro, which gives the company room to hold wages down.
- Morningstar analyst Mark Giarelli called human drivers the clear loser and noted that if the union pushes wages up, that only sharpens Uber’s incentive to automate, the same pattern seen when minimum-wage hikes spurred automation in fast food.
- Organizers push back that the strike is only one lever. They plan to lobby for regulation and protections like guaranteed breaks, and note that outside the Bay Area and Los Angeles, demand for human drivers still far outstrips the small AV fleets.
Travis Kalanick Says He Has No Regrets Over the Failed Lyft Deal
SOURCE – Yahoo Finance
Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick says he does not regret the company’s collapsed 2014 bid to buy Lyft, chalking it up to a culture clash. “I would sit across the table from the guys and it was just clear that we were very culturally different,” he said in an interview with Andreessen Horowitz. The comment lands as Uber pushes deeper into robotaxis and a short-seller takes aim at Lyft.
- Kalanick, who resigned as CEO in 2017 and left the board in 2019, said he would not do anything different about the failed acquisition, which fell apart over valuation and other terms.
- At the same time, short-seller Bleecker Street Research alleges Lyft faces multi-billion-dollar liabilities from sexual-assault claims, saying prospective cases could top 6,000.
Dutch Regulator Fines Uber $966 Million Over Automated Driver Suspensions
SOURCE – Reuters
The Dutch Data Protection Authority has decided to fine Uber 825 million euros, about $966 million, for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without properly informing them. It would be the second-largest fine ever issued under Europe’s GDPR. The case cuts to the heart of a driver complaint that has followed Uber for years: getting cut off by an algorithm with no clear explanation and no easy way to appeal.
- GDPR bars decisions made solely by algorithm when they significantly affect people’s lives, requiring meaningful human review and a way to challenge them. The regulator found Uber violated both drivers’ rights and their right to be informed.
- The case covers European incidents from 2020 to 2022 and was handled in the Netherlands, where Uber’s European headquarters sit. It started with a complaint out of France.
- Uber says it will appeal, calling the fine disproportionate and arguing only a small number of drivers were affected, with 126 deactivated over low ratings in 2021, and that its current process includes human review and a way to dispute suspensions.
QUICK HITS
- Uber Eats will pay a $4.4M settlement to drivers in Seattle. – Seattle Times
- In the New York Times, a passenger writes Lyft charged him a cleaning fee for a mess he didn’t make, likely the result of a fake vomit report. – NYT
- Lyft is lobbying to influence a major federal transportation bill and contractor-classification rules. – Legis1
- Want to learn more about the robotaxi industry? Subscribe to The Driverless Digest, our new newsletter and podcast dedicated to the future of autonomous vehicles.
Must Listen Or Watch RSG Content
Here are this week’s featured podcast episode and YouTube videos:
- RSG269: This $12K EV Could Change Uber Driving Forever With Bingo Tech
- Lyft Just Made Elite Status HARDER to Earn
- Uber Is Raising This Driver Fee AGAIN
- Uber REFUSED This Driver’s Cleaning Fee?!
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