Lyft adds a new app for drivers

I think this is a very good idea! I know many people around where I live who use local Uber drivers whom they trust to schedule early-morning rides to the airport and things like that. The rider will have the driver come to his/her house at the specified time, and then the driver and the rider will both turn on Uber and the rider's request will be filled by that driver because nobody else is nearby that early. This would would make it much easier to do something like that for both the rider and the driver, and I see this as an important use case because it's really the only remaining one which many people would prefer to use a car service or taxi service than Uber/Lyft. It's also much more profitable for the driver so drivers will like this a lot. Great move on Lyft's part, maybe they could consider allowing riders to directly send requests to certain drivers. The point here being that riders using Lyft like a car service have drivers they trust to come on time, not cancel, etc. which are the only potential problems I see here.

So this is of course anecdotal but the only time I book taxis is when it's very important I get somewhere in time, like catching a plane early in the morning. Given the nature of Uber/Lyft it would take a lot before I would trust them with this.

I don&#x27;t think scheduling a ride a few days in advance actually helps the drivers. One of the best things about Uber or Lyft for the drivers is that they don&#x27;t have to think about scheduling, they&#x27;re told exactly where to drive.<p>If they have a scheduled ride and they forget about it, or they&#x27;re stuck waiting around to make that ride and lose business, that doesn&#x27;t seem like it will be popular.<p>One big thing that Uber needs to fix is the incentive scheme. One of the Uber drivers I talked to said she hated how they were, in my words, gamified into earning their incentive bonuses. And the incentive bonuses change every time, so it makes it hard for them to keep track. That&#x27;s something Uber needs to change in order to increase driver satisfaction, making it clearer and more consistent on how to earn the incentives which is where the drivers make more. I don&#x27;t see how Lyft&#x27;s &quot;Power Zones&quot; are any different from Uber showing where surge is occurring, but if it works, then great.

This could be a really good thing if you&#x27;re an hour away from the airport where you have a morning flight, but a really bad thing if the driver decides that morning to not take you. :)

With the caveat that I don&#x27;t work for Lyft DevOps or anything (I only used to be a driver way back when)... If you need to make a critical update to the driver side your code is solidly firewalled from having to pass integration tests with the passenger side, and there&#x27;s a possibility that some problems bleed through between the two different parts of the app. In the early days, there were a few updates where such things leaked through (if I remember correctly, there was one version update where the passengers accidentally could see the primetime map).<p>Quite frankly, I&#x27;m suprised they hadn&#x27;t done it sooner.

Grrrr... BI no longer works when you have an ad blocker installed.

As a rider, I haven&#x27;t noticed the Lyft app to be slow or especially bloated, so it will be interesting to see if it is significantly faster once the update pushes through with the driver portion removed.

Interesting, there&#x27;s obviously a demand for this feature but I wonder if it will change the way the end user books rides substantially or if its just a nice to have.

Chinese Didi had it long ago...

Anyone got a non-BI link?

Everyone loves the underdog

Why is this front page worthy?<p>Uber has had these features for a while now. As someone else mentioned, Didi has had these features too. 71 upvotes so far. This just further reinforces my view that there is an active voting ring on HN manipulating Uber and Lyft stories in Lyft&#x27;s favor, which is ironic since many of the comments on such stories talk about Uber being shady.<p>Throwaway because I fully expect the voting ring people to downvote this.<p>Downvoters and those who upvoted this story, please leave a comment explaining why this is front page worthy.

Let&#x27;s see how that goes...