Uber

I got an uncomfortable feeling while reading this essay about the difficulties of finding a reliable means of transportation from the DNC. Part of it is the over-reliance of cities on ridehail apps like Uber to accommodate large numbers of people in the absence of adequate public transit. And the other part is the knowledge that this is just the way it’s going to be from now on. Taxi stands are a thing of the past. Uber has its claws sunk deep in the government. We’re all stuck in the Ride App Zone for life.

Tony West, who also served in the Department of Justice during the Obama administration, just spoke at the DNC. Of course, he wasn’t there to talk tech, but rather, to speak to Harris’ character.

Announced in May, Uber Caregiver will help caregivers more easily arrange transportation and deliveries starting this summer. What I think is really useful, though, is that Uber’s partnering with health insurers so you could use healthcare benefits to pay for rides to medical appointments and more.

The waitlist is free to join, so why not?

If you use Uber with an iPhone, you can turn off unwanted marketing notifications — but the feature is a leetle hard to find. Okay, it’s a lot hard to find. John Gruber found it, though: go to Account > Settings > Privacy > Offers and Promos from Uber and tap the word here.  You can then unsubscribe from some or all Uber marketing emails or notifications.

Uber’s Lost & Found Index just came out, with a look at the most commonly forgotten items (clothes, luggage, not shocking), the most forgetful cities (get it together, Miami!), and the weirdest things people are leaving in their Ubers. Also, it’s Wednesday, which is apparently Leave Your Wallet In An Uber Day. Be careful out there!

Waymo has been offering autonomous rides in Phoenix since late 2022, but now it’s providing transportation for a new kind of customer: your dinner. Starting today, Waymo will start making food deliveries for some Uber Eats customers.

Uber works with a few other companies for autonomous food deliveries in other locations. For now, this program is limited to Tempe, Mesa, and Chandler, and only “select merchants” are included. Taco ‘bout a slow rollout.

According to The Wall Street Journal, ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft “say people are receptive to their ads,” with customers “less likely to cancel” their rides if they’re distracted by advertisements while they wait.

Uber has been cramming ads wherever it can, but it doesn’t work everywhere. The Journal writes that people hated them in push notifications so much that Uber cut those out in under a day, but folks don’t mind movie trailers on in-car tablets.

Just in time for al fresco dining season, too. But for real, don’t make your courier hack through a jungle or swim across rivers to find you. And don’t forget to tip!

In addition to discounts for eligible Uber Pro drivers, Revel will use anonymized Uber data to decide on future EV charging station locations to address “charging deserts,” according to a press release shared with The Verge by Uber spokesperson Conor Ferguson.

Revel CEO Frank Reig says this will help it grow its charging business in NYC and, eventually, other cities. Revel plans to add 48 public fast-charging stations near the rideshare waiting area of New York’s La Guardia Airport.

The robots are expected to hit the sidewalks of Tokyo starting at the end of March, marking Uber’s first international expansion of its autonomous delivery service. The six-wheeled delivery robots are manufactured by Cartken, an Oakland-based AI company, and operations will be supervised by Mitsubishi Electric. Delivery robots are growing more popular, but they still require a team of human workers to make the system work.

That’s because thousands of Uber and Lyft drivers in over a dozen cities are going on strike for 24 hours to protest low wages and unfair practices by the gig economy companies. Their demands? A larger cut of fares, a living wage, transparency in pay calculations, and an end to unfair deactivations.

“The main challenge is surviving,” said Nupur Chowdhury, an Uber driver and ride-share organizer in Arlington who helped plan the strike in the Washington area. “We cannot make the same amount of money we used to make, even if we work double the hours.”

The alcohol app has been a cybersecurity headache since Uber acquired it a few years ago. The FTC found out that a hack affected 2.5 million customers in 2020, two years after the company initially learned about a security flaw.

“We’ve decided to close the business and focus on our core Uber Eats strategy of helping consumers get almost anything — from food to groceries to alcohol — all on a single app,” Uber SVP of delivery Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty told Axios.

Uber will pay $290 million (3 percent of its revenue generated last quarter) and Lyft will pay $38 million (4 percent of its revenue) to settle allegations that the ride-sharing companies illegally withheld wages and mandatory sick leave from drivers in New York. Over 100,000 drivers in the state could be eligible to receive funds under the settlement.

Starting today, Phoenix residents can use the Uber app to hail a ride in a driverless Waymo vehicle. The two companies — former rivals turned frenemies (?) — first announced the partnership earlier this year. Tellingly, it’s only available in Arizona, and not California, where tensions around robotaxis are starting to get, well, tense.