What you need to know about Uber, Lyft and other app-based car services

For the first time last month, I requested a car using a smartphone. The app correctly guessed my location using GPS, gave me a ballpark arrival time with a real-time map, and even estimated the fare. A polite driver arrived on time and whisked me to my destination. When I tried to pay and tip, he explained that the payment was already taken (I’d receive a receipt by email soon) and that the service (Uber) forbade tipping.

Wait, what? No haggling, luggage fee, credit card refusal, time wasted on receipts or even tipping? This was an epiphany! But professional taxi drivers who pay thousands of dollars for a license are understandably not thrilled about these services. Neither are many cities (and regions) which collect those fees and say that Uber/Lyft/etc. are dangerous or improperly insured. The result of this clash, thus far, is chaos: bans, mass demonstrations and even violence. Despite all that, ridesharing poster-child Uber was recently valued at $17 billion. So, will app-driven car services gain traction or be run out of town?

WHAT IS IT?

Uber and Lyft are the best known services, but other players include Sidecar, Wingz, Summon and Hailo. In Europe, there’s also LeCar, SnapCar, BlaBlaCar, Djump, Heetch and Carpooling.com. Uber has several slightly different services: it still operates its limo-style UberBLACK, which requires drivers to have a commercial chauffeur license and insurance. Taxis can now sign up for a service called UberTAXI with their existing permits and insurance. Finally, there’s the pure ridesharing service UberX and an even cheaper version called UberPOP. For its part, Lyft and its pink ‘stache is ridesharing-only, but recently announced Lyft Plus, a premium service it says is cheaper than competitive offerings.

Believe it or not, SideCar and Lyft only launched two years ago. Uber arrived in 2009, but was just limos with apps until UberX launched in 2012. Oddly, the companies style themselves as “peer-to-peer transportation” platforms, not passenger services. So why the slippery terminology? We’ll cover that soon, but it’s largely about licensing, permits and insurance.

If you drive for Uber or Lyft (or Sidecar, Hailo and others) you don’t need a commercial license or commercial insurance. However, all the services require a clean driving record and Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) check. They also perform a 10-year background check to ensure drivers have never been convicted of a violent crime, sexual offense or DUI (for example). Uber, Lyft, Sidecar and others also offer liability insurance for drivers, passengers and pedestrians for up to $1 million, but only if the driver’s personal insurance doesn’t cover an accident. Both Uber and Lyft now levy a $1 per-ride charge for insurance.

A driver who works for all three companies in San Francisco (let’s call him “Jasper”) told me that Lyft and Sidecar encourage drivers to be extra-smiley and friendly, complete with fist bumps. He added that Lyft tends to overdo it, however, and some drivers “don’t drink the Kool-aid” and aren’t crazy about the “look-at-me” pink mustaches — which aren’t optional, by the way.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Most ridesharing companies have a smartphone app that works on iOS and Android. You need to sign up and give your personal details, along with a credit card or PayPal account. When you’re ready to find a ride, they all work about the same. You can input your location based on your GPS coordinates, and add your destination if you need a price estimate. Again, with Sidecar you must enter your destination when you order a car. Most will tell you how close the nearest ride is in minutes, and show the car arriving on a map. You’ll also get the name of your driver, their overall rating (for Uber and Lyft, it’s on a scale of one to five) and the type of car they’re piloting.

The nearest driver is dispatched based on their GPS location, and just before they arrive, you’ll receive a text message. “Jasper” told me that Uber’s driver app won’t transmit your destination to the driver, unlike Lyft and Sidecar’s app. Instead, he has to enter it manually when the passenger arrives, so most Uber drivers pack a second phone or GPS. However, Sidecar customers must enter a destination, which drivers like as it gives them a close idea of their fare. He said that many of his customers avoid Sidecar for the same reason, though — they’d rather not be bothered.

When I used UberX about a half dozen times on a recent trip to San Francisco, none of the drivers had a rating less than 4.7 out of 5. However, the quality of vehicles varied. I rode in an older, not-very-fancy (but clean) Toyota Corolla and in a new, deluxe Honda Accord. Some drivers were very familiar with the city and drove me efficiently to my destination (I checked), but a few times they overshot it or took a wrong turn. Incidentally, Uber drivers keep track of passenger ratings, too, but keeps them under wraps to avoid confrontations — a low enough passenger rating can get you kicked off the service. The only way to find out is to ask a driver, who may or may not reveal it. I was told that on all three services, if either you or your driver give a rating of three out of five or less, you’ll never be paired together again.

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST?

Once you arrive, the driver will stop the “meter” and that’s it. You can just say “bye” and split, because your fare has already been calculated and the payment taken automatically. Tipping isn’t permitted on most services, though 20 percent is automatically added on UberTAXI (that can be changed globally). So how much does it cost? That depends, but the chart below for San Francisco — the home base of Lyft, Uber and Sidecar — offers a rough idea. Most of the services come in around 10 – 30 percent less than a regular taxi…with some huge caveats. Uber’s infamous “surge” pricing, for instance, could make a trip much more expensive depending on demand, while Lyft’s happy hour pricing could make it much cheaper (which aggravates some drivers). UberBLACK, XL and VAN services are higher, more in line with the price of a taxi or limo.

[Source: Uber, Lyft, SFMTA — assumes 4 minutes of traffic/red light delays for cabs]

Sidecar allows drivers to select their own rates — either lower or up to 1.25x higher than the so-called community average (the company doesn’t post those figures). That lets users pick a driver with a low fee or, say, a high rating. Jasper told me, however, that Sidecar offers drivers some other interesting options. For instance, during their own commute, drivers can lower their minimum rate drastically to ensure they have a fare, rather than riding empty. If a neighbor goes to work at the same time, for instance, the driver could give him a cheap ride every day — a win-win deal.

How much commission ridesharing companies take is another interesting aspect. Jasper said that right now, Uber is charging a 20 percent commission while Lyft is charging zero in San Francisco. (He added that fees seem to drop when companies get new rounds of funding.) In addition, drivers can be offered bonuses for recruiting other drivers — Uber is reportedly offering up to $500 for new recruits right now.

WHAT’S AT STAKE?

It’s hard to see the downside of ridesharing for passengers. The increased supply of cars makes it easier to find a ride, for one thing — even if you prefer taxis. It also avoids the normal calling or wandering around to hail a cab, and gives you a status of your ride from the moment you request it. It’s often cheaper than a cab, and there’s rarely a dispute about unwanted fees or questionable route decisions. And the rating systems help keep drivers (and passengers) honest.

From a ridesharing driver’s perspective, it’s mostly all good, too. You’ll never get stiffed on a fare, and the services generally shuffle cars around efficiently, minimizing downtime. The pre-registration process and automatic ride logging also adds a safety factor for both parties. Of course, most cab drivers would rather that ride-sharing services go away. They see them as amateur interlopers who pay no hefty fees, but steal precious fares. As pointed out by the New Yorker, if peer-to-peer transportation companies continue on their current trajectory, they could put a lot of taxi drivers out of business. That would turn out to be bad for passengers in the end, too — with less competition, fares would go up.

WHAT’S THE ARGUMENT?

A demonstrator kicks a car, suspected to be a private taxi, during a protest in Madrid, Spain

Ridesharing has two loud camps — which have literally come to blows in the past. Cab drivers call Lyft and Uber businesses-for-profit — not “peer-to-peer transportation” — and believe they should pay the same license fees and insurance as taxis. Cities, states and countries feel the same, in many cases. Uber started up in Vancouver last year, but was quickly shut down on the grounds that it was technically a limousine service and had to charge a minimum of $75 per trip. Similarly, it was barred in the state of Virginia and is technically illegal in all of Belgium.

In addition, though Uber now does thorough background checks, it wasn’t always so careful. Following an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, it had to apologize for hiring a driver with a felony conviction and was forced to redo thousands of driver screenings. Other black marks include an allegation of kidnapping against one Uber driver (the charge was dropped), and questions of insurance gaps for passengers. The new $1 fee for “passenger safety” and insurance addressed those issues, but one pundit noted that it was like paying a fee not to get assaulted.

On the other hand, taxis have a horrible reputation in many cities. According to the Washington Post, some 12,000 complaints were filed against cab drivers in Chicago through the city’s Business Affairs and Consumer Protection fields, or around 33 per day. Amongst those, one passenger cited a driver that left him at the curb when the driver saw that he had a guide dog, while another cabbie refused a customer that wanted to pay with a credit card. Worse, many drivers have been cited for racist behavior or flat-out dangerous driving. Ridesharing services say their drivers would be banned with the first sign of such behavior, or weeded out by lousy customer ratings. They also say there wouldn’t be a demand for their services in the first place if cab companies didn’t mistreat customers so poorly.

WANT EVEN MORE?

The best way to find out if ridesharing services are for you? Grab one of the apps, sign up and give it a whirl. You’ll find them by searching for Sidecar, Uber, Lyft et al on the iOS and Google Play app stores. Unfortunately, none of the major players have official Windows Phone apps at the moment — Uber did at one point, but the app was pulled. Uber also has a BlackBerry app. Lyft, Uber and Sidecar‘s blogs detail new city locations, service changes and other news. Uber also uses its blogs to discuss controversial topics, like the banning of cars in Brussels. You can check out the Washington Post’s story about the litany of Chicago taxi complaints, the Daily Beast’s argument against Uber’s $1 “safety” fees and why ridesharing insurance headaches could get worse. Forbes’ feature details the competition between Uber and Lift while GQ’s Uber Cab Confessions touches the industry’s sordid side. Finally, we here at Engadget have covered Lyft, Uber and Sidecar closely since ridesharing became “a thing.”

[Image credits: Uber, Lyft, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images, Paul White/AP]

Filed under: Transportation

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Second Life’s second act will be a social network for virtual reality

Eight years ago, I was slouching through my college’s required mass-media course and silently groaning while my professor excitedly mapped out the promises of Second Life. That online virtual world, where players create items, clothes, buildings and more for actual sale, would replace the internet, she told us, and render the humble web page as outmoded as the Xerox machine. Her enthusiasm wasn’t unwarranted for the time: The first user to earn a million dollars on Second Life had just been featured in Businessweek, and Reuters had assigned a full-time reporter to cover that digital frontier.

Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Second Life-maker Linden Lab, admits the press’ overblown expectations didn’t match up with the early realities of the service. “There was this impression that it under-delivered,” he says, speaking from the company’s San Francisco office. “It was sort of unfairly overhyped and then got the backlash of the under-hype.”

“You find people today and they say, ‘Oh, is that still around?’”

That backlash eventually pushed Second Life out of Reuters‘ headlines (and my professor’s syllabus), but it didn’t shut the platform down. This week marks Second Life’s 11th anniversary and Altberg says it’s still turning a profit. Since its inception, $3.9 billion has passed through Second Life’s marketplace, of which Linden Lab pays out “tens of millions” of dollars to in-game creators each year. The privately held firm wouldn’t say exactly how much that adds up to on its own ledgers, but maintains its annual revenue is in the same ballpark as the $75 million figure given to SFGate last year.

Still, Altberg believes public perception could be better. “You find people today and they say, ‘Oh, is that still around?’” Not only is Second Life still going strong, but Altberg also says it’s as healthy as it has ever been. At its peak, Second Life was host to a little more than a million active users every month. Linden Lab staff members tell me this number has remained fairly steady over the product’s life, but it is lower today: tallying up to just under a million active users each month.

A Library of Congress exhibit in Second Life shows off a scan of the Declaration of Independence.

The state of Linden Lab’s public image doesn’t seem to bother the company’s new CEO. Altberg has only been with the company for a few months, but he speaks about Second Life with the pride of a founder. “We could argue that it’s the only meaningful virtual world that’s been created to this date,” he says. If there’s an opportune time for him to boast about Linden Lab’s experience building virtual worlds, it’s now: Facebook’s acquisition of Oculus VR has driven the concept of virtual reality back into the public consciousness. In fact, a beta version of Second Life that supports the Oculus Rift is available for users to test right now. But despite this, Altberg seems cautious about relying on VR as a lure to draw new users to Second Life’s world.

“We could argue that it’s the only meaningful virtual world that’s been created to this date.”

“We have to be careful,” he says. “We’ve learned from the past that — even though we’ve made tremendous things — it’s still a pretty steep learning curve.” For a second, it sounds like he’s bemoaning the difficulties of learning to cope with virtual reality and the simulator sickness that accompanies many Oculus Rift experiences, but he’s actually talking about Second Life itself. It’s true that Second Life features a suite of deep creation tools, vast user-created worlds and a marketplace healthy enough for some users to live off of their in-game creations — but the virtual world’s interface is complicated and difficult to learn. “I wouldn’t necessarily want to send an incredible mass of people to come to Second Life today,” he explains further. “Many of them would have the same opinion they had a year ago … It’s very easy for someone who would be an ideal user for our product to come in and end [up] in the wrong place and get a negative experience.” Virtual reality simply adds another level of confusion to the platform. The VR beta might be a fun distraction for die-hard users, but Altberg admits it’s not ready for mass consumption. “We’re not trying to make too big a deal out of it,” he says. “It’s still early.”

Linden Lab may have tacked Oculus support onto its 11-year-old virtual world, but the company’s interest in the headset probably lies with the future of its platform: Second Life’s spiritual successor. “We’re going to spend a ton of energy in the coming years on a next-gen platform,” Altberg says. “That’s a big project that we’ve kicked off since I came on board.”

A painstakingly crafted tribute to the Tudor era — just one of the creations Second Life’s citizens have contributed to the online world.

The project is only in the earliest of conceptual stages, but Altberg’s vision for the next-gen platform has it spanning almost every device its users could possibly own. “How do people interact with the world from their phone, from their pad, from their PC and from their Oculus? All of that we’re solving from the ground up with this new code base,” he says. “Multi-device from day one.” Altberg wants this new platform to be a virtual world that embodies everything Linden Lab got right with Second life, but bigger and more accessible. He also thinks of it as a development platform for new games and virtual reality experiences.

“We’re going to spend a ton of energy in the coming years on a next-gen platform.”

“It’s a platform,” he says. “In some ways, you could compare it to Unity.” Altberg wants developers to see both Second Life and its eventual successor as game engines they can build their content on. He tries to paint me a picture: “I’m going to build an experience that has virtual capabilities,” he starts. “Do I use Second Life? Do I use Unity? Do I use Unreal Engine? Well, if you want to use those [latter two], your technical ability needs to be a lot higher and you have to have a team. In Second Life, you just come in and start building.” If Linden Lab’s follow-up to Second Life has a good Oculus Rift implementation, he explains, then every experience on that platform can be an Oculus experience. “So, the bar of entry for anyone to be able to create an Oculus experience … it’s almost like we have the lowest bar possible,” he says.

Second Life can be many things to different types of users.

The more Altberg describes the concept, the more his vision for Linden Lab’s next virtual world sounds like the overhyped expectations Second Life was originally burdened with. His ambitions for the project are certainly high. “We’re building the next-generation platform for hundreds of millions of people; not for millions of people,” he says. This statement seems contrary to the platform he described to me earlier — Altberg wants Facebook-like user numbers, but also wants the platform to be complex enough to woo developers away from traditional game-development platforms like Unity and Unreal Engine.

When I ask him how he expects to attract 100 million users without dumbing the experience down, he balks a little. “Would you rather have a really deep and broad product that enables a ton of stuff, and it can only attract 50 million people,” he asks, “or do you want a really dumb product that can attract 800 million people? Or a billion people? You have to choose, sort of.” Sort of, but not completely — Altberg believes a versatile platform will give an initially small user base the ability to create experiences that attract a much larger user base. “If we can empower creators to create incredible things,” he says, “they, in aggregate, will acquire hundreds of millions of people.” In essence, what Altberg is aiming for is not a user base for Second Life or its successor per se, but rather users of specific experiences within those platforms.

A Second Life recreation of “The Man” from the annual Burning Man festival.

If anything, Linden Lab’s bid for the future of both VR and its own platform sounds more like Facebook than the multiplayer games most associate with the term “virtual world.” Second Life, and its eventual successor, may function on the surface as a simple 3D world where users can interact on a social level — but like Facebook, it’s also a platform that can support more complex experiences. Sure, you can use Facebook for mundane tasks like updating your status or looking at your mom’s vacation photos, but you can also use it to play games like FarmVille, UberStrike or Mafia Wars. Suddenly, Mark Zuckerberg’s interest in Oculus VR seems a little less strange.

“We’re building the next-generation platform for hundreds of millions of people; not for millions of people.”

Will the next “Second Life” replace the internet, outmode web pages and redefine online interaction as we know it? Probably not — I still think that college professor was crazy — but it might have a shot at being the first viable virtual reality social network if it can capture the attention of average users. “I feel like we’re in a very good place,” Altberg says. “We are the most experienced when it comes to this stuff. We’re bullish; we’re investing; and all the things that are happening around us with Oculus and the market getting excited about these things again [are] great for us. It’ll make it easier for us to attract talent.”

[Image credit: John “Pathfinder” Lester/Flickr (Library Of Congress/Second Life); Tudor Rose, Flickr / Hacsa Karillion (Tudor church); janet.powell/Flickr (Burning Man)]

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Amazon giving away $100 worth of apps today and tomorrow only

Good guy Amazon is offering up one heck of a deal this weekend for its Free App of the Day program. Starting today and running through tomorrow (June 28), you can take advantage of the Summer App Bundle which comprises some 31 apps and games. All told, the group is worth $100.

You can download any or all of these titles so don’t feel obligated to pick up apps you wouldn’t normally consider. We see some really fun games here as well a few awesome utilities; look around and tell us your favorites!

Travel and Weather Apps

• AccuWeather Platinum ($2.99)
• Travel Interpreter ($9.99)
• MobiLearn Talking Phrasebook, English-French-German-Italian-Spanish ($9.99)
• Pho.to Lab PRO ($2.99)

Productivity and Utility Apps

• Jump Desktop ($9.99)
• Root Explorer ($3.99)
• Notepad+ ($0.99)
• 2Do: Todo List | Task List ($6.99)
• Pocket Informant 3 ($9.99)
• Business Calendar ($4.99)
• Splashtop Remote Desktop HD ($8.99)
• MyBackup Pro ($4.99)
• Acalendar+ ($3.99)
• EZ Money Manager ($9.95)
• Plex ($4.99)

Fun & Games Apps

• Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek ($2.99)
• League of Heroes Premium ($2.99)
• CrossMe ($4.95)
• Real Shanghai Mahjohn ($2.20)
• CLARC ($2.99)
• Pinball Deluxe Premium ($2.99)
• Wedding Dash Deluxe ($0.99)
• Sudoku 10,000 Plus ($2.49)
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2 ($2.99)
• Dungeon Village ($4.50)
• The Room Two ($4.50)
• Card Wars – Adventure Time ($3.99)
• Ravensworld: Shadowlands ($6.99)
• Loco Motors ($1.99)
• Dr. Panda’s Bus Driver ($2.99)
• PUZZINGO Puzzles (Pro Edition) ($14.99)

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United States planning legislation to offer Europeans the same privacy rights as US citizens

The United States government intends to offer European citizens the same privacy rights extended to US citizens. Exactly how it will do that is yet to be determined, but US attorney general Eric Holder this week told European leaders of the Obama administration’s intention to create legislation offering EU citizens “the same right to seek judicial redress for intentional or willful disclosures of protected information and for refusal to grant access or to rectify any errors in that information.” Holder made the announcement at a US-EU home affairs and justice ministers meeting in Greece this past Wednesday.

The news comes in the wake of a strained 12 months in US-EU relations; information revealed by former security/cryptography expert Edward Snowden showed that the US government spied on a variety of EU leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Holder’s lack of specificity left EU leaders wanting for more. “Words only matter if put into law,” EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding told The Guardian. “We are waiting for the legislative step.”

The legislation that Holder and the Obama administration seek would offer European citizens the same rights that American citizens are afforded under the 1974 Privacy Act. The US Department of Justice explains the act as such: “The Privacy Act prohibits the disclosure of a record about an individual from a system of records absent the written consent of the individual, unless the disclosure is pursuant to one of twelve statutory exceptions.” Those “twelve statutory exceptions” are what you might expect, from statistical analysis (the census, for instance) to law enforcement, to credit bureau reporting.

Regardless, none of this is meaningful just yet — as Viviane Reding put it, “Words only matter if put into law.” We’ll have to wait and see what the Obama administration’s next steps are, as the announcement is little more than a more direct version of the same story we’ve been hearing for months.

[Image credit: AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris]

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Source: The Guardian