Lyft Hopes You’ll Ditch Your Car, and Get Paid for it, or Never Buy One at All
Lyft announced that it would expand its “Ditch Your Car Challenge,” an attempt to both promote its services—the company makes the whole idea of not owning a car a little easier, goes the argument—and to continue to cast itself as a traffic-busting, city-friendly transportation option.
The challenge works like this: Roughly 2,000 participants from 35 cities (including Miami, New York, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake City, along with Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee) will apply to be randomly chosen to pledge to ditch their cars for a month. In exchange for their fidelity, they’ll receive $300 in Lyft Shared credits, a one-month Zipcar car-share membership and $100 drive credit, $105 in public transit fares, and $45 to go toward a bike-share option. (These figures might vary slightly by market.) The catch: Participants have to actually own a car to ditch.
Read the article at Wired.
Candice Groth Named Director of Purchasing at Merchants Fleet Management
Merchants Fleet Management is pleased to announce that Candice Groth has joined their team as its Director of Purchasing.
“Candice brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to Merchants Fleet Management,” said Vice President of Fleet Operations Adam Secore. “Her expertise in new vehicle ordering, supply chain management and operations will be a great addition to the company.”
New Fuel-Cell Technology Could Cut Cost Significantly
Volkswagen has teamed up with Stanford University to develop a process to manufacture the fuel cells that can power vehicles in the future by reducing the amount of platinum used.
Fuel-cell technology is regarded as a serious alternative to battery-electric technology, but it has always come with a comparatively high cost.
“This technology opens up enormous possibilities for cost reduction, as the amount of precious metal used is minimized. At the same time, service life and catalyst performance are increased,” said Stanford Professor Friedrich Prinz. “In addition to the fuel cell, atomic layer deposition also offers a whole range of other applications requiring high-performance materials, such as next-generation lithium-ion batteries."
Read the article at The Detroit Bureau.
Automakers Deliver Message to Trump – We Told You So
Ford Motor Co. CEO Jim Hackett reminded the White House that levies on steel and aluminum “took about $1 billion in profit from us." Rival automakers used a Senate hearing to warn that extending the tariffs to foreign-made vehicles could cost jobs and drive consumer prices higher.
Ford’s executive chairman, Bill Ford Jr., used Thursday’s 100-year birthday celebration of the iconic Rouge complex in Dearborn to sharpen the point: “Our business runs a lot better when we have clarity,” he told a media scrum Thursday. “Our lead times are long, our capital intensity is such that our business is at its best when we have certainty.”
Read the article at The Detroit News.
Some States and Cities May Get Rid of Red-Light and Speed Cameras
Several states have moved to get rid of red-light cameras or diminish their use in local communities as complaints pour in from drivers who think the cameras are there to reap revenue rather than prevent accidents.
The insurance industry group, the IIHS, cites its own research. “A 2011 IIHS study of large cities with longstanding red light cameras found that cameras reduced the fatal red light running crash rate by 24 percent and the rate of all types of fatal crashes at signalized intersections by 17 percent,” it said in a report.
Read the article at MSN.
