Lyft's Vision Of Future Looks Exactly Like A Taxi Service

Joshua Gans listened to Lyft co-founder John Zimmer’s vision for the future of the company and has a very pertinent question. Zimmer seems fully committed to the idea of autonomous vehicles despite the ongoing problems with the technology. More interestingly, Zimmer believes “It will be both more practical and appealing to access autonomous vehicles when they are part of Lyft’s networked fleet…Why? For starters, our fleet will provide significantly more consistency and availability than a patchwork of privately owned cars. That kind of program will have a hard time scaling because individual car owners won’t want to rent their cars to strangers. And most importantly, passengers expect clean and well-maintained vehicles, which can be best achieved through Lyft’s fleet operations.” Gans’ question is why is a large fleet of vehicles that is available for hire any different than a traditional taxi service. For Gans, there is disappointment in the company seemingly abandoning a ride-sharing future for corporate ownership. My question is why are Uber and Lyft getting special treatment rather than being regulated just like taxi services if that’s exactly what they are.