A human taxi driver is good for some things, says David Risher. That morning he almost missed his flight from Brussels to Hamburg - if the driver hadn't brazenly zoomed past on the hard shoulder in the morning rush hour. In business terms, however, the boss of Uber's competitor Lyft relies on robot taxis that adhere to traffic rules. Risher wants to launch this technology in Germany shortly.
Just over a year ago, Risher bought their taxi app FreeNow from the German car companies BMW and Mercedes. It fits with Risher's mission as CEO of the listed US app Lyft: by expanding the business and, above all, through internationalization, he should ensure that Lyft can permanently compete against its powerful competitor Uber.
Risher takes an appropriately energetic approach. “We want to significantly expand our presence in Europe and anchor the Lyft brand in many European countries by expanding our services,” said Risher on Wednesday evening at the Hamburg Business Journalists Club.
London's own robot taxis are about to be launched. Risher bought for this in China: the Chinese IT group Baidu supplies the cars. The British capital is currently becoming a European testing ground for autonomous driving. In addition to Lyft, Google sister company Waymo and British developer Wayve are also planning to launch in the city. The latter is considered the most promising technology company for autonomous driving in all of Europe.
London's streets could soon be similar to those in Risher's hometown of San Francisco, where autonomous taxis from Waymo, among others, are already an integral part of everyday life. In Germany, on the other hand, discussions are still ongoing as to whether the technology is even realistic. Risher wants to help change that soon.
FreeNow concluded a corresponding declaration of intent with the city of Hamburg nine months ago. It is now becoming clearer which partner Risher wants to work with. “In Hamburg, unlike in London, we will start with a Western partner,” he said.
He left it open which partner he would specifically rely on in Hamburg. In the USA, Lyft works with Waymo, among others. The operator, which has so far sent the most robot taxis onto the streets in the world, has already announced its start in Munich and is looking for employees in Berlin. But Lyft could also bring other robot taxi developers from the USA with them - or rely on the British from Wayve. Other European projects, such as in Zagreb, have already started using Chinese technology. One reason is that providers like Baidu and Pony.AI can offer working technology that has been tested in their home country.
His strategy is to try out several partners. It is clear that there are reservations about Chinese partners, for example because of data security. Risher described that the cars purchased from Baidu would be placed in a Faraday cage in London to check that they were not sending signals to China. In addition, all data would be anonymized.
Initially, Lyft will mostly own the cars itself, Risher said. In the coming years, Risher expects taxi operators to purchase several of these cars at a time and run them through his platform. The self-driving cars are only intended to complement classic taxi drivers. It is uneconomical to build up such large fleets of expensive robot taxis that they can cover demand even during peak times or major events. At these times, conventional cars with people behind the wheel are also needed.
In the long term, however, he expects autonomous driving to find its way into private cars, said Risher. Then private individuals could send the cars via Lyft if they don't need them themselves and thus make money from their cars. Tesla founder Elon Musk describes his future vision for private cars in a similar way.
So far, projects with robot taxis in Germany have been progressing with difficulty. Hamburg's Transport Senator Anjes Tjarks (Greens) had actually planned for tens of thousands of robot taxis to drive through the city by 2030. There isn't much to see. The VW subsidiary Moia is testing autonomous shuttles on the Elbe, but it still has safety drivers on board and is making slow progress. In addition, the austerity car company has less and less budget left for such experiments. Other projects in Germany are running on a small scale - and drivers are still on board everywhere to monitor the technology.
In addition to the technical revolution, Lyft CEO Risher is also planning a more impactful brand presence. The FreeNow brand therefore has no long-term future. Risher confirmed that he wants to gradually abandon the Mercedes and BMW taxi brand. A few weeks ago, in addition to FreeNow, a second app was launched in Europe under the Lyft brand, which travelers from the USA can use to book taxis in Europe. In Germany this is possible in Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Cologne, among others. In the coming months, both apps will be merged and appear uniformly under the Lyft brand.
However, Risher wants to hold on to the European headquarters in Hamburg, which emerged from the start-up MyTaxi, which was founded in 2009. Likewise at the developer location in Barcelona. It is important to understand local customers in Europe and build contacts with cities and regulators.
Under the old owners, FreeNow recently campaigned for the taxi industry in Germany. The company therefore stopped offering to order other, usually cheaper cars in addition to official taxis, similar to Uber, at a large surcharge in Berlin and Cologne, among others. At that time, the company demanded that cities use the possibilities of the amended Passenger Transport Act to set prices at the same level as taxi tariffs for everyone. However, so far this has only happened in Hamburg. There are still legal disputes about a similar attempt in Munich. In the other cities, Uber can continue to offer cheaper rides without hindrance.
Apparently FreeNow is losing market share as a result. Risher plans to reverse the decision shortly and offer the cheaper rides again in its app. Things are similar in the USA. Lyft also offers both options there. The app is often a little cheaper than Uber.
However, the better-known competitor is significantly stronger financially and better represented worldwide. Uber therefore recovered faster than Lyft from the collapse in transport numbers after the pandemic.
The former Amazon and Microsoft manager Risher replaced the Lyft founders at the top in 2023 and has since been restructuring the company - and looking for growth. In the past six months, the battered share has already gained a good 20 percent of ground.
In the third quarter, Lyft had sales of $1.8 billion and posted a loss of almost $10 million. The company aims to provide one billion rides worldwide in 2026. According to Risher, around 22,000 taxi drivers in Germany use the app.
