Lyft is opening a series of car repair centers in the US for its drivers

[AutoShopOwner]

Working as a ride-hailing service driver definitely puts added wear and tear on your vehicle, and in an effort to help drivers lower their maintenance costs, Lyft announced on Tuesday that it opened the first of several planned service centers for its drivers in San Francisco.

This service center is the first of over thirty such facilities planned to open their doors in 2019. The center will offer vehicle maintenance and repair for less than what a driver could expect to pay at a regular shop, or at least that's the idea.

The San Francisco location has a planned hourly repair rate of $95 dollars, which, depending on the marque of the car being serviced, is slightly below average. The repair services offered will be mostly aimed at basic stuff like brakes and alternators.

Lyft also plans to offer package deals for certain services. For example, an oil change paired with a tire rotation and a car wash will set a driver $70. Part of Lyft's intent with these service centers is also to save drivers time, so they can spend more time driving and less time at a shop.

In his blog post outlining the decision to offer more driver services, Lyft COO Jon McNeil explained that these service centers would be staffed by Lyft employees and that at least some of these would be certified mechanics.

Lyft didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

News source: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/lyft-car-repair-service-center-san-francisco/

[Robert Summers]

Lyft and Uber are both facing core business challenges. Specifically, attracting drivers and cash burn (hence both going public this quarter).

They currently are subsidizing customer rates while drivers are still earning low wages when you factor wear and tear on the vehicles and maintenance costs. They are doing this to increase users and get more people familiar to the concept of asking a stranger to show up so you can hop in their car.

Lyft specifically has identified attracting drivers as a core challenge in their IPO documentation. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1759509/000119312519059849/d633517ds1.htm#toc633517_4

While this is an interesting concept I don't see the immediate threat to our industry. Neither have the budget or desire to expand this concept nationally at this time and if you're "Uber" customer's are like mine, they aren't typically spending very much at your store anyway. This is really an attempt to attract drivers in certain key markets.

So far, companies like Amazon have had serious resistance breaking into "Service" businesses. I doubt Uber and Lyft will cause us too much headache until autonomous vehicles start to become an option, then we are all going to be in for an awakening!

[Hands On]

On 4/3/2019 at 9:01 AM, Robert Summers said:

 until autonomous vehicles start to become an option, then we are all going to be in for an awakening!

After they get the first repair bill they will learn how to program our shop address into the computer.

Edited April 8, 2019 by Hands On