Lyft's growth is rocketing and the company is now doing a million rides a day
Lyft is now doing 1 million rides a day in the US, and is on track to hit 350 million rides by the end of the year.
"These important growth milestones are driven by a relentless and multi-year focus on our mission of improving people's lives with the world's best transportation," Lyft president John Zimmer told Business Insider via email.
Rival Uber's troubles began in January, when over 200,000 deleted their accounts as part of the #DeleteUber movement, sparked by the company's actions during a taxi strike at JFK. While Lyft had been steadily increasing its market share - the number of rides has grown 100% month-over-month for 48 months consecutively - the company got an extra boost as customers left Uber and switched to Lyft.
In some markets, Lyft claims to have 40% of the market share, and Lyft is especially gaining in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, and New York City. On the national level, Lyft sees itself as having 30% of the market, although outside analysts peg it closer to 20% .
Uber still has a considerable size advantage on Lyft in both cities and ride volume. Lyft is only in the US and operates in 350 US cities, compared to Uber's 614 cities worldwide. Uber, which hasn't publicly disclosed a daily ride count, also hit 5 billion rides last week.
Still, Lyft is clearly starting to catch up as it hits a million rides (and counting) a day.
"Every day, more drivers and passengers are choosing Lyft because we have focused from Day 1 on embedding hospitality and service in everything we do," Zimmer said. "As we've reached service level parity, the Lyft experience has become a key differentiator."