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POLITICO Tech
Talking gig workers and robot drivers with Lyft’s CEO
00:18:32
Tech companies are laying out their wish lists for President-elect Donald Trump. And the ride-sharing company Lyft has two big asks: nationwide benefits for gig workers and national standards for autonomous vehicles. Lyft CEO David Risher says he’s optimistic about the incoming Trump administration and its deregulation agenda. On POLITICO Tech, Risher tells host Steven Overly why Washington should embrace both the gig economy and robot drivers.
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- [00:04]
Stephen Overley
Hey, welcome back to Politico tech. Today's Friday, December 20th. I'm Stephen Overle. Tech companies have been laying out their wish lists for President elect Donald Trump. As we talked about earlier this week, some executives have even been visiting Mar a Lago to make their plays in person. The ride sharing company Lyft has two big asks. It wants nationwide benefits for gig workers and national standards for self driving vehicles. Now, Washington has debated both issues in recent years, and legislation has never broken through. The CEO of Lyft is David Rischer. He's been the head of the company since April 2023. And he says he's optimistic about the incoming Trump administration and its deregulation agenda, which he thinks could be a boon for Silicon Val. It doesn't hurt that the autonomous vehicle industry will have some influential advocates in the incoming administration, including Trump benefactor Elon Musk, who makes autonomous vehicles at Tesla, and incoming AI czar David Sachs, who was an early investor in both Lyft and Uber. On the show today, David lays out his case for why Washington should embrace the gig economy and a future where robots drive us around. Here's our conversation. David, welcome to Politico Tech.
- [01:39]
David Rischer
Oh, thank you, Stephen. It's great to be here.
- [01:41]
Stephen Overley
So I have a bunch of questions for you about gig work and autonomous vehicles, but I sort of want to get to politics up front. I did a show earlier this week talking about Silicon Valley CEOs who have been traveling to Mar a Lago to meet with the President Elect Donald Trump, and sort of kiss the ring, as it were, as it's been described. Have you met with him or do you have plans to meet with him yourself?
- [02:06]
David Rischer
I haven't, but it's mostly because I think he's got other things on his mind right now. So I'll give him plenty of space to get things in order. Look, we're super excited about the new administration. And I say that just because every time things move forward politically, you have to adapt. And Lyft's an innovative company. We want drivers to succeed. We want to serve and connect people all over the United States. And I'm actually super excited to see what the next four years brings.
- [02:34]
Stephen Overley
What do you make, I guess, of the incoming administration and how it is shaping up when it comes to regulating tech companies? Does anything about how this second term is looking feel different to you from the first?
- [02:45]
David Rischer
Well, I mean, in a way, of course, it's way too early to tell. Right. Let's be clear, the second term hasn't even begun yet. The early signs. I think there are two interesting early signs, I'll put it that way. One is clearly a new look at sort of the regulatory framework. And I think that's healthy, right? I mean, you know, regulations tend to sort of grow like kudzu, and, you know, it's very, very hard to get rid of things once they're sort of established because they have a constituency and so forth. So I think it's completely reasonable to periodically, you know, an administration look with a very sort of careful eye at sort of the administrative state that makes all the sense to the world. I think the technology world is particularly interesting when it comes to regulation because, of course, you know, we're literally trying to sort of create the future. And it's quite hard to figure out how to sort of, you know, apply the right level of regulatory scrutiny when at the same time you're trying to invent things that haven't been invented before. And I think for a long time, you know, I've been to D.C. i think six or seven times since I started this job, and one of the sort of themes that comes across is there's. There's sort of sort of distrust in both directions. You know, distrust from the west coast of sort of the East Coast. What are you up to? Do you really even understand distrust of the east coast to the West Coast? You know, do you know, do you really understand the implications? So, anyway, so I sort of like the idea that there's going to be much more bridging. I think it's just not super healthy to have kind of two different sides in this thing. So the idea of, you know, Silicon Valley having maybe a bigger voice in D.C. and D.C. being more interested in what's happening in Silicon Valley seems only smart. And then when it comes to our world in particular, I'm super interested in figuring out a way where, in particular, regulations around labor can evolve to really embrace the gig economy, which I think have been a little bit stuck for a while.
- [04:23]
Stephen Overley
You mentioned sort of that distrust or miscommunication, however you want to describe it, between sort of the west coast and East Coast. There's a sense that with President Trump in particular, tech does have to sort of kiss the ring, as I said earlier. Is that like, a fair characterization, do you think, in terms of how tech gets in the good graces of Washington?
- [04:44]
David Rischer
I don't know. I think maybe there are two different things going on. I think it's no secret that leaders from everywhere are trying to make sure that Donald Trump knows that their paying attention to him and that they respect some of the things he's doing and so forth. I think that's kind of pretty well understood. I think that the tech piece is actually sort of deeper and longer standing than that. You know, it's been true in the Biden administration, maybe even back in the Obama administration, that the tech world, I think, has a certain amount of skepticism built in almost that D.C. has anything to offer and vice versa. And so I think that's sort of almost embedded itself for some period of time. And again, it's just, I mean, tech powers too much of our economy. It's too important to the future to have that level of sort of mistrust. But I think that's a little bit deeper than just sort of, you know, a trip to Mar a lago type knee jerk thing.
- [05:42]
Stephen Overley
And you said that you're sort of optimistic about the incoming administration. I wonder if you can elaborate on where that comes from. You know, what are you looking forward to or expecting from them?
- [05:53]
David Rischer
Sure. Well, let's look at two things that are. And let me back up for just a second. So when I talk about Lyft's purpose, like why do we exist as a company, I think this is quite important. It's to serve and to connect. Okay, what do I mean by that? I mean on the service side, we want to serve riders and drivers better than they've ever been served before. Right. And 2 million times a day, literally, someone gets in a car that's driven by a driver and they go somewhere important. And drivers, every time that happens, are making money. Literally. This is the gig economy. Like every single time a person gets in a driver's car, they're making money. This is a really significant part almost of the nation's infrastructure. Right? The sort of physical, economic infrastructure of what happens. And so when I say I'm optimistic and maybe I look particularly at drivers, I think drivers have had to go through this kind of frustrating period where on the one hand, so many of them vote every single day with their feet, with their time, saying, this is work I like because it helps me, you know, save for my kids college education or make extra money on the side or do any number of things. And yet the sort of regulatory framework for that hasn't really kept up. It's still sort of stuck a little, little bit in kind of W2 land for a lot of drivers. So if I just look at drivers, I think there's just a huge opportunity to sort of say let's, let's remake things so that it Works better for you.
- [07:10]
Stephen Overley
Well, I want to talk about some of those sort of ideas you have for remaking that. I want to start though, with just the picture at Lyft. How many of your drivers kind of drive for Lyft as their primary income? And what kind of money can you make? Can you make a living as a Lyft driver?
- [07:28]
David Rischer
Yeah. So, great. Couple of questions. So first I will. So the total number of drivers we have just to level set that are driving on the platform in any given year is about 1.4 million. So it's very significant. If you look in a community and, you know, look at the number of people who are just on Lyft, and then you add Uber and the. And doordash and so on, you're often talking about a very sizable percentage of every community. Now to your question. The answer is roughly 90% of our drivers are part time. Often they're students or they have elder care or they have child care, or maybe they've got a 20 hour or a 30 hour a week job. But that sort of, they want to make more money in addition to that, and this has to fit into that. So the vast, vast majority are part time. And, and then I'll say one last thing, which is part time doesn't just mean two or three hours a day. It might be they do it for a couple of weeks and then they take a trip and then they do it for a couple more weeks. So it comes in different flavors, but the vast majority are part time.
- [08:23]
Stephen Overley
And you were talking about sort of the regulatory framework around the gig economy. Ironically, I was on my way into work this morning. I took a ride share and full disclosure, it was not Lyft, but we got into an accident on the way into the office and everyone was fine, myself included. But, you know, my first thought was, you know, this driver lost not only his car, at least temporarily, but effectively his office. Right. Like his business.
- [08:49]
David Rischer
Right.
- [08:50]
Stephen Overley
How do you protect people from kind of the vulnerabilities that come with gig work?
- [08:56]
David Rischer
Yeah. So. So first of all, I'm really glad you're okay. I'm glad the driver's okay.
- [09:01]
Stephen Overley
Slightly banged up, but everyone's fine. Yeah.
- [09:03]
David Rischer
Okay, I understand. Yeah. So zoom out for just a. Well, no, I won't even zoom out. Let's talk very directly about this. So, you know, what you're referring to is exactly the type of framework we're actually advocating for, which is how do you have something like a workman's compensation policy in a world of gig work? Let's Zoom out for just a second. It's because it's so interesting. Like this driver, as you say, they've taken two assets that they have. They've taken their time and they've taken their car and they've put it to work. Right? And in a way, let's talk about the good for a second before the problematic. It's sort of magical. It's sort of magical. It's like there aren't that many jobs where 24 hours after you sort of need to make extra money or maybe you've lost your job, or maybe you want to save for a particular thing, you can sort of be up and running. So that's amazing, right? That's very, very rare. Most jobs, you don't really get that. And let's remember too, in the W2 world, it's not always that you have huge control over that job once you get it, you know, if you're working as a barista or whatever, you know, your shift can change on you, your schedule can change, they can mess with your hours, they can tell you, sorry, the store is closing. Like, all sorts of bad stuff can happen there too. So let's not idealize the existing world either. Now, having said that, bad things happen, right? So in this case, it sounds like a terrible thing happened. You know, the driver got in an accident today in many states, you're right. It kind of means they're offline for a while until they can get their car back. Now we have a program called Flex Drive, which helps you rent a car if you need it, and you can sort of use your earnings to pay for that car. That's a very successful program. But a program like Workman's Comp could be super, super compelling. We actually have such a program in some states. Washington state's a good example where we've. You can actually pay into a workman's comp, and it kind of helps you in situations like this. But here's the sort of the tragedy of it all. In many states, it's very difficult for us to get things like that on the books because if we try, it starts to open us up to legal challenge. It's this weird kind of conundrum where we actually want to advocate for policies like that, but a lot of the regulatory framework right now makes it very difficult for us to do so.
- [11:15]
Stephen Overley
Are you looking to the federal government for some type of national standard and how realistic is that, you think, in the. The coming Washington?
- [11:24]
David Rischer
So, absolutely, our view would be if there were a national framework that Sort of protected, this worker independence. Once that's protected, then we can say, great, let's start to add more and more benefits and other things that give, we think, workers the best, or, you know, drivers the best of both worlds. But it's, it's complex. I mean, because it's new, it's novel, and someone in Washington has to care enough not to make a political point of, oh, you know, here are the bad guys, you know, rideshare, but rather, hold on, here are the guys who actually want to help drivers, but don't really want to then be, you know, backed into some corner of putting them as W2 employees, which will then, you know, mess up our business model.
- [11:59]
Stephen Overley
We talk a lot about artificial intelligence on this podcast and companies like Lyft are in an interesting position because obviously you have a large rideshare business with human drivers. You also are in autonomous vehicles and have been early in this conversation of is autonomous technology, AI technology going to replace human workers? I guess one question that I sort of have is, do you think that artificial intelligence will ultimately push more of us, not just in the driving space, but in general, into kind of the gig economy, gig style work?
- [12:33]
David Rischer
I mean, this is a very interesting question and I think so. The short. I'm not sure I can answer the question directly, but I can give you maybe some ideas around it. Yeah, there's no question that like any new tool, you know, we're going to have to sort of co evolve alongside it. Right? You know, I mean, so AI is coming and we're inventing it. We as humans are inventing it. So, you know, we better also figure out a way to, you know, make sure that we still have a place in this equation as we invented. When I look at the specifics of autonomous vehicles in the rideshare industry, I actually think it is going to be, you know, what you would think of as market expanding, market expanding. And what I mean by that is, so first, drivers are going to have a job for a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time. Right? AVs will come, but they will be step by step, they'll be city by city. There's not enough capital in the world to put into $200,000 cars, which is kind of how much these things cost. You know, it's just, it's just going to be many, many, many years. So first, let's, let's stipulate that. Second of all, let's stipulate that there'll be many people who, for all sorts of different reasons, you know, choose to have a human driver. The third thing is, you know, as more and more people get used to being driven around by humans or by, you know, robots again, more people will use this service. So I'm, I'm. And then the last thing I sometimes talk about is like, there are all these other interesting jobs that don't even exist right now. Like, you can imagine a world where the person isn't driving the car anymore, but they're like the car tender. They're like shaking the drinks on the front as you come home from your, or you go out to your party and serving them to you and kind of whatever kind of curating that experience. Oh, by the way, drivers can also own AVs and maybe make money with that. Maybe instead of just having one car, Maybe they'll buy two AVs and they'll deploy those two cars on the platform at the same time. So I think there's so many interesting things that are going to happen here. You know, 10 years ago, the term didn't exist. Now, something like 30%, 35%, I think, of Americans have sort of at least dipped their toe in the gig economy water. And I really, the reason I want to say that is because that's, I think, a feature, not a bug. There is an enormous amount of, frankly, power that individuals have right now to sort of work on their own terms that they didn't have before. And I'd say at a macro level, you know, it's in part, it's going to be important for our country to sort of embrace it when the economy gets bad. You know, it's really nice for people to be able to cycle into this type of work quite quickly.
- [14:59]
Stephen Overley
Got it. You know, I think I wrote my first article about driverless cars probably 10 years ago or so. And it's, you know, back then the technology was still being tested and. Yeah, but companies like Lyft and Uber and, you know, some of your other brethren in this space really believed that it would catch on. Clearly, you still believe it's catching on. I'm curious, are autonomous vehicles as kind of widespread now as you thought they would be?
- [15:24]
David Rischer
Well, no, I mean, it's the short answer, but. But I have to say it's one of those very interesting things where. So, yes, you're absolutely right. Like back in 2018, 2017, people are like, oh, these are going to be everywhere by 2020. And here it is 2024, almost 2012, and clearly they're not everywhere. Having said that, in very small areas, they can feel like they're Everywhere. So if you walk the streets of San Francisco, parts of Phoenix, parts of Austin, you can feel it. And so what's happening right now is again, the areas are very small and they're very small for all kinds of reasons. They're very small because these cars are mapping out literally every square inch of these places. Notice that none of those places are high snow areas, you know, so it's a step by, step by step thing. But you are beginning to see evidence that they, that they are going to come. And by the way, they are safe. You know, of course they're going to get in accidents occasionally, but generally they don't, you know, they know the rules of the road, they don't text, you know, so there's some really good reasons to believe that these are going to be important and there's some really good reasons to believe it's going to take a long time. Primarily, you know, the cost and also just our own acceptance of this new technology. It'll vary widely, just as it is for, you know, electronic vehicles, electric vehicles and all sorts of other things. These things take time.
- [16:35]
Stephen Overley
Is there anything that you think Washington can do to speed up that adoption?
- [16:41]
David Rischer
You know, I think it's not so much the speeding up. I think it's more the not slowing it down. And really what I mean by that is, again, like, to be clear, these are 2,000 pound chunks of metal driving around. Like, you have to think very carefully about driver safety, rider safety, pedestrian safety. So no one would say, you know, it's a, it's some sort of free for all. But what we don't really want, I don't think as a, as a nation is to recreate that labor problem I was just talking about a couple of minutes ago, where you have 50 different states coming up with 50 different policies and 50 different ways of doing things that's just not, you know, cars, you know, they drive over state borders. You know, it's sort of a national thing. And EVs are coming sort of, you know, nationally over the top. So I think the single biggest thing is to have sort of a unified framework around things like safety and reporting, even novel things. I mean, here's a crazy thing, right? Some AVs aren't going to have steering wheels. Is that okay? Is that not okay? If it's okay, maybe make it okay nationwide, don't sort of make 50 different states. Try to figure out whether that's a good idea or not. I think that's probably the single biggest thing.
- [17:45]
Stephen Overley
Well, David, appreciate you being here on Politico Tech for sure.
- [17:49]
David Rischer
I really appreciate all your questions and your interest.
- [17:55]
Stephen Overley
That's all for today's Politico Tech. If you enjoy Politico Tech, please subscribe on Apple, Spotify or your preferred podcast player. And for more tech news, subscribe to our newsletters, Digital Future Daily and Morning Tech. Music in our show comes from the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder. Our managing producer is Annie Reiss. Our producer is Afra Abdullah. And our editors are Steve Heuser, Daniela Cheslo and Louisa Savage. I'm Stephen Overleigh. See you back here on Monday.