Surge pricing, the scourge of ridehailing, is evolving for the robotaxi era

It’s a acquainted vexation for ridehail users: you unfastened the Uber oregon Lyft app, participate your destination, and observe that your intended travel costs respective times much than expected. The culprit is surge pricing, 1 of ridehail’s astir important and arguable innovations. Customers grumble astir higher fares, but Uber and Lyft executives person insisted that surge pricing benefits them by attracting further drivers, which allows the companies to fulfill much trips and trim hold times. 

That justification makes intuitive sense, but it raises an awkward question astir robotaxis, which are expanding crossed the US, from San Jose, California, to Washington, DC. If surge pricing is intended to grow the operator pool, wherefore is it present being utilized by companies with driverless vehicles?

Waymo, which offers robotaxi trips successful the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, charges surge pricing during highest times, arsenic did Cruise, its now-defunct competitor. Assuming a robotaxi fleet is already afloat deployed, higher fares cannot grow conveyance proviso successful the mode they could for Uber oregon Lyft. Instead, riders simply request to wage extra, assuming they tin spend to, oregon hunt for different mode to travel.

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.