Lyft launches a car rental service with no mileage limit, starting in SF and LA for as low as $35 per day
Starting in SF and LA for as low as $35 per day — Lyft is getting into car rentals. The ride-hailing company announced Thursday that it's launching a rental service available …
It also fits a clear pattern of Lyft stretching beyond point-to-point rides — from the Lyft Lux premium tier in 2017 to the $299/month All-Access Pass — as the company tries to convert its rider base into multi-product customers while gross bookings growth decelerates.
First-order effects
Riders in SF and LA gain a flat-rate, unlimited-mileage rental option inside an app they already use for rides, directly competing with traditional airport and neighborhood rental counters on price transparency.
Second-order effects
Incumbent rental chains face pressure to match the no-mileage-cap structure or lean harder on upsells like insurance and upgrades, where their margins actually sit; Lyft meanwhile gains a way to monetize demand it already routes, potentially feeding renters into its ride-hail trips for one-way legs.
Third-order effects
If the rental line scales beyond two cities, Lyft moves further toward being a multi-modal mobility subscription platform — cars rented, rides taken, and passes bundled — rather than a ride-hailing company that occasionally experiments.
The trend: Ride-hailing platforms are expanding into adjacent vehicle-access products — rentals, subscriptions, tiered services — to deepen wallet share per user as core ride growth slows.
Lyft is renting cars at prices so low that it is 100% burning giant piles of money in the process. Only $35 a day + $40 in credit just to get to and from the rental car facility in SF or Oakland. Oh yeah and unlimited milage. https://www.theverge.com/...
This would be useful for me since I'm carless, but I hope they execute better than on bike share. I subscribed to Bay Wheels for a year and they still don't have electric bikes back in SF.🤦♂️ https://www.theverge.com/...
Lyft's latest bid for multi-modal supremacy is car rentals. Uber dabbled with car rentals last year but ultimately abandoned the idea. Not sure adding a new massively subsidized car-based travel mode will help with Lyft's cash problems https://www.theverge.com/...
Lol... Californian dude bros will run this into the ground.. and a third of these cars may end up 8 states over. Somebody will use this as a taxi service charging ppl $10 a head for a ride to work. Maybe Lyft shd just work on helping high speed rail get off the ground https://twi…
The stage of advanced capitalism when there are very few new business ideas and many “new” business models are designed around burning obscene amounts of VC money with the long term goal of eliminating existing models to settle on slightly better margins https://twitter.com/...