Lyft may trail Uber in popularity, but it beat its competitor to one very important milestone: Becoming a publicly traded company. The ridesharing giant began trading on Wall Street on Friday, March 29, with the ticker symbol LYFT, and its $24 billion valuation exceeded investor expectations.
To go public, Lyft had to open its books to the public for the first time. We learned the company generated $2.2 billion in revenue in 2018, a significant increase from the $1.1 billion it produced in 2017, and the $343 million result it posted in 2016. The company claims to have served 30.7 million riders in the United States and Canada in 2017 with its fleet of 1.9 million drivers.
Lyft is still taking significant losses. It generated a net loss of $911 million in 2018. That’s on top of losses of $687 million in 2017 and $683 million in 2016. It will now hope to draw in investor money to the tune of $100 million, with the possibility of increasing that figure depending on investor interest, according to CNN.
In addition to showing its books, Lyft also talked about some of its plans for future growth. Within its S-1 filing document with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company revealed its ever-growing interest in autonomous cars. It explained that it’s approaching driverless vehicles with a two-pronged strategy: By opening up its platform to developers of autonomous cars and by working on its own proprietary technology for self-driving vehicles. The company also acknowledged that autonomous vehicles could result in a “loss of income to human drivers.”
Lyft has already started to test its self-driving technology on public roads. In 2018, it announced its autonomous shuttles had completed 5,000 rides in the Las Vegas area. The prototypes are commonly seen driving themselves down The Strip.
Lyft is the first major tech company to file for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2019, but it likely won’t be the last. There are a number of other so-called “unicorns” waiting for the right moment to go public. Airbnb, Pinterest, Palantir, and Slack are all considered likely candidates for IPO status, as is Lyft’s main competitor, Uber, which could go public as early as April 2019 with a valuation that could exceed $120 billion. If Lyft has success, and it’s off to a good start, it seems likely that at least some of these other firms will follow suit and become publicly traded companies.
Updated 3-29-2019: Added information about Lyft going public.
BYD has launched the third-generation Qin Plus DM-i in China, and the first thing that caught my eye is its price. According to CarNewsChina, the plug-in hybrid sedan starts at 79,900 yuan, which is about $11,980. That’s an incredibly low price for a brand-new car, especially by US standards.
What’s even more impressive is the range. The Qin Plus DM-i can drive up to 137 miles on electricity alone, which should cover most people’s daily commutes without using a drop of gas. Once the battery runs out, the 1.5-liter engine takes over. Thanks to its 17-gallon tank and roughly 91 mpg with a drained battery, the combined range reaches up to 1,423 miles.
Apple won the PC market’s worst quarter, but that’s not the entire story. It won the race by stumbling less than everyone else.
PC makers shipped just 57 million computers worldwide in Q3, which might look good, but it’s a 21% year-over-year plunge (via Counterpoint Research). And despite Apple’s Mac shipments falling by 11%, to 5.6 million, its market share rose from 8.7% to 9.8%. How did that happen?
Update (October 22 23:54 PT): In response to our query, GM clarified that offline recording support is already available on eligible vehicles. Like Tesla's Sentry Mode, it requires owners to connect a USB drive to save incident recordings, which can be viewed on the vehicle's infotainment screen. The upcoming Connected Cameras feature will build on this by giving owners remote access to these recordings via the revamped OnStar app, allowing them to check footage without walking out to their car.
General Motors has announced plans to add a new Connected Cameras feature to its OnStar service starting next year, giving drivers a way to monitor parked vehicles remotely and capture footage of certain incidents.