Lyft is hiring ride-hailing drivers to do everything but get behind the wheel.
Flexdrive, Lyft’s car rental arm, plans to open a depot in Nashville to service Waymo self-driving cars later this year. Waymo started offering rides in the city in April.
Some of the 70 people Flexdrive plans to employ there are car mechanics, and others with technical skills. About half, however, are current or former Lyft drivers stepping into new roles as car cleaners and depot management, said John Parks, CEO of Flexdrive.
Ride-hailing services like Lyft traditionally outsourced many of the costs and obligations of vehicle maintenance to the gig-worker drivers who own the cars. Now, as companies like Waymo put more driverless cars on the road, they are having to figure out who will take on those responsibilities.
Many of the duties can’t be automated — yet. “It actually takes a lot of people,” Parks said. “They don’t clean themselves.”
A chance to ‘get skilled up’
Flexdrive’s 80,000-square-foot facility will be a 20-minute drive from downtown Nashville in an ex-Post Office warehouse near the city’s airport.
Once open, it will house Waymo vehicles when they are not needed or when the EVs need to be charged, cleaned, or repaired.
Flexdrive, which rents cars to both consumers and Lyft ride-hailing drivers, already employs former gig drivers for about 35% of its workforce, Parks said.
Hiring Lyft drivers for full-time jobs at Flexdrive, including the company’s forthcoming Nashville AV depot, makes sense, he added. Ex-drivers usually bring their experience, including knowledge of peak ride demand in specific cities, to their new jobs.
“They understand a bit more about the business than anyone coming off the street,” he said. “They often have this consumer-centric mindset.”
Flexdrive’s Nashville depot is one of a few partnerships that Waymo has struck to maintain its fleet of self-driving cars. The company also works with Uber to store and maintain its vehicles in Atlanta and Austin and has an agreement with car-rental company Avis Budget Group.
Many drivers say that they are watching to see whether self-driving cars end up displacing them on ride-hailing apps. Uber and Lyft have said they expect to have fleets that use both self-driving and human-driven cars in the near future.
Landing a job at facilities like Flexdrive’s in Nashville represents an alternative career path for ride-hailing drivers looking to make a change, Parks said.
“If you want to get skilled up while you’re working at one of our depots and then go work somewhere else, great,” he said.
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