Less than five months ago, TechCrunch and Forbes report, Lyft launched a Carpool feature for people commuting outside of San Francisco city limits. The idea was that people would pick up passengers on their way to work and make anywhere from $4 to $10 per ride. The service, which was only available in the San Francisco Bay Area, has since shut down because not enough drivers were interested in participating.
“We’re pausing the test because it’s too soon to scale to a meaningful level where supply (Carpool drivers) meets demand (Carpool passengers),” a Lyft spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch.
Back in May, I wrote about a corporate carpooling startup called Scoop that works with companies like Tesla, Twitter and Cisco. At the time, we wondered if Lyft was better positioned to tackle carpooling, given its roots with Zimride. Flash-forward to today and Lyft’s Carpool feature is no more, while Scoop is still going strong, saying that it’s the largest carpool network in the country. In its first year, Scoop put more than 125,000 people in cars. That said, this is probably not the last time Lyft will try its hand at carpooling. “While we think a scheduled carpool feature is the right long-term strategy, it is too soon to scale to a meaningful level where supply matches demand,” a Lyft spokesperson said. “We learned a lot and will apply it to new and existing projects — like Lyft Line — as we drive our vision forward to solve pain points in commuting.”
