It looks like by a 1.5-2 years we should be back down to 90,000 plates. It's similar to the pre pandemic downward trend who knows what the future of fhv plates holds
Yes, thanks very much for sharing and pointing this out! We've been tracking this (also note some drivers and fleets are also storing their plates too). A trend many people forget about is leading up to pandemic, when the first instance of Uber/Lyft driver lockouts happened at the end of 2019 / early 2020, there was a lot of natural TLC Plate attrition going on (clear FHV oversupply). This whole exercise of releasing 10,000+ TLC Plates in a year was madness / unnecessary and has predictably caused massive market volatility, which the regulator needs to avoid. Unfortunately, some of those lost TLC plates will also be drivers who bought EVs that have to hand in their plates because of an accident or repair they can't afford. If we see it drop below 108,000, we'll likely write an article.
Great article once again. I’d like to add the following:
1. Utility rate (UR) is now just dumb in practice. The original intent of it was noble in theory but the rideshare companies (in an effort to maximize profits) found a loophole and the loophole disrupts driver pay and potentially increases fares for riders, which is directly opposite of what the spirit of UR was supposed to do and what the TLC intended. I don’t blame the rideshare companies for doing lockouts one bit. I would do lockouts, too, if I were them!! It simply makes economic sense. Lyft and Uber don’t benefit from doing lockouts, either. Uber, for example, used drivers that had high number of rides on their platform during lockouts. These drivers were excluded from lockouts whereas drivers with a relatively lower number of rides would get locked out. Think about that. Uber basically told the burnt out, fatigued drivers that they won the lockout lottery and would now get more rides. Meanwhile, the driver that took care to drive when fresh and not fatigued was locked out. Makes no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, let’s say a driver gets locked out in Easter Queens and he has to travel to western Brooklyn to be in a busy area, he may just call it a night and go home. Now, you have less and less drivers and with a lower supply of drivers you have the potential for lower supply of drivers and higher fares for riders because demand remains the same, yet another drawback to UR. UR is like taking an average of the outside temperature for the entire year and then deciding whether to wear a bikini or winter coat when a pair of jeans and light jacket would suffice. Who cares what that number is? No one!!! Get rid of it. It’s a terrible metric that benefits absolutely no one. It’s convoluted and is not a fair representation of what is actually going on in the FHV at various times of the day nor during certain seasons of the year. The UR between 5 am and 10 am on a rainy Monday morning is way different than the UR between 10 am to 3 pm on a sunny Tuesday. The TLC has the power to demand data from Uber and Lyft about each and every single driver on their platform and determine if drivers are making a certain average minimum wage or not. With that data (and assuming the TLC is economically rational) it could then make the necessary adjustments with regard to issuance or attrition of driver and vehicle licenses AT THEIR DISCRETION-not the rideshare company’s.
2. Thank God for the NYTWA!! This is an organization that is truly smart, tough in looking out for their members, and obviously not conflicted like IDG. IDG should be ashamed of themselves. I would be on calls with them and I wanted to jump through my Zoom platform and scream in their faces for their utter nonsense ideas that made absolutely no sense. If IDG had their way, we would another 30k EVs on NYC streets and many more drivers would be starving.
3. My understanding is the current City Council has a very “EV good, every other vehicle bad” attitude. This woefully shallow outlook needs education and mountains of patience before more driver businesses are destroyed. A better emphasis, as you mentioned, needs to be made with hybrids. It took over 10 years to make hybrids palatable. Next year all Toyota Camrys will be hybrid for 2025. That’s a milestone. We’re getting to a cleaner environment but let’s not kill driver businesses in the interim to achieve an EV goal that is really unrealistic.
4. I have a vehicle license but I recently had to rent from a rather large rental company, Buggy, for a few weeks. Overall, my experience with them was was very positive. Everything was charged exactly as they said. My deposit was returned without me having to beg and plead for it. They were very professional and friendly. They run a good shop. They gave me oil changes, repairs, renewed the vehicle insurance, made necessary repairs to pass NYS inspection. They told me I could return the vehicle whenever I wanted as long as I gave them one week notice, which I thought was fair. When I would call to say I was going to return the vehicle I’d have to rent it for a longer time and they were completely okay with this. What they charged me was competitive and NOT PREDATORY when you consider what renting a vehicle license with no vehicle is priced at on a monthly basis. In fact, I think their margins might be too thin but they have no choice to have competitive pricing because there is so much competition out there. I would definitely do business with them again and they are in no way compensating me for making these remarks and claims. I merely want to give an actual TLC driver’s experience and testimony with a rather large rental fleet company. I’m sure Chairman Do could have sent a battalion of undercover drivers to come up with similar conclusions and report this back to him.
Thank you, again, for a wonderful piece and for being a sound, detailed, and reasonable mouthpiece in this industry.
Wow! Great detailed commentary! Re. the Camry, we did read the 2025 is only going to be hybrid (like the Sienna). Imagine, TLC could *easily* achieve a 50%+ hybrid FHV/taxi fleet in a few years, but instead they are incentivizing drivers to buy EVs that will be technological obsolete in 3/4 years (vs. EVs of 2027/28) and also likely cause a fair amount of financial stress to many drivers as you point out. Hopefully the more noise is made / pushback published the TLC and City Council will reflect on policy - if they don't then there's going to be a lot of issues, as you know. Appreciate the kind words as well 🙏
Perhaps "working class" would have been the better term haha. You would be surprised though, some NYC drivers we know make $100,000+, which might qualify as middle class but you make a fair point!
You’re right. There are some drivers that make over $100k but in order to make that as a basic Uber X/Lyft driver AFTER VEHICLE EXPENSES, you need to work an average of 11-12 or more hours per day every single day of the year. I’ve done the numbers based on my own driving experience and data. These drivers are the exception and not typical.
Based on our understanding it’s happening to many more drivers now. Perhaps it was more limited or muted previously. For example, the driver that sent us the screenshot to us said that previously this never happened to them, but guess some sort of new “user / driver agreement” came out 3 weeks ago and since then it’s begun happening to them, when it never happened previously
Hmm interesting. It has been happening to many drivers i know for several months now and I knew immediately why it was happening. If the UR is not going to be effectively enforced i agree that it should eliminated because its of no good atm
Probably even more concerning sign tbh. If more and more drivers are facing this, it probably implies Lyft UR might be getting really bad. This is first time we’re hearing about it from the drivers we know (but they might are more “ full-time” in nature to be fair, so now if it’s hitting them…😬)
I've been keeping track of active fhv plates
109,504- 3 April 2024
109,575- 4 April 2024
109,584 -6 April
109,561 - 7 April
109,569 - 9 April
109,589 - 10 april
109,552 - 12 April
109,530 - 14 April
109,452 - 16 april
109,468 - 19 April
109,254 - 29 April
109,305 - 01 may
109,236 - 03 May
109,131 - 05 May
109,081 - 06 May
108,987 - 07 May
It looks like by a 1.5-2 years we should be back down to 90,000 plates. It's similar to the pre pandemic downward trend who knows what the future of fhv plates holds
Yes, thanks very much for sharing and pointing this out! We've been tracking this (also note some drivers and fleets are also storing their plates too). A trend many people forget about is leading up to pandemic, when the first instance of Uber/Lyft driver lockouts happened at the end of 2019 / early 2020, there was a lot of natural TLC Plate attrition going on (clear FHV oversupply). This whole exercise of releasing 10,000+ TLC Plates in a year was madness / unnecessary and has predictably caused massive market volatility, which the regulator needs to avoid. Unfortunately, some of those lost TLC plates will also be drivers who bought EVs that have to hand in their plates because of an accident or repair they can't afford. If we see it drop below 108,000, we'll likely write an article.
Great article once again. I’d like to add the following:
1. Utility rate (UR) is now just dumb in practice. The original intent of it was noble in theory but the rideshare companies (in an effort to maximize profits) found a loophole and the loophole disrupts driver pay and potentially increases fares for riders, which is directly opposite of what the spirit of UR was supposed to do and what the TLC intended. I don’t blame the rideshare companies for doing lockouts one bit. I would do lockouts, too, if I were them!! It simply makes economic sense. Lyft and Uber don’t benefit from doing lockouts, either. Uber, for example, used drivers that had high number of rides on their platform during lockouts. These drivers were excluded from lockouts whereas drivers with a relatively lower number of rides would get locked out. Think about that. Uber basically told the burnt out, fatigued drivers that they won the lockout lottery and would now get more rides. Meanwhile, the driver that took care to drive when fresh and not fatigued was locked out. Makes no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, let’s say a driver gets locked out in Easter Queens and he has to travel to western Brooklyn to be in a busy area, he may just call it a night and go home. Now, you have less and less drivers and with a lower supply of drivers you have the potential for lower supply of drivers and higher fares for riders because demand remains the same, yet another drawback to UR. UR is like taking an average of the outside temperature for the entire year and then deciding whether to wear a bikini or winter coat when a pair of jeans and light jacket would suffice. Who cares what that number is? No one!!! Get rid of it. It’s a terrible metric that benefits absolutely no one. It’s convoluted and is not a fair representation of what is actually going on in the FHV at various times of the day nor during certain seasons of the year. The UR between 5 am and 10 am on a rainy Monday morning is way different than the UR between 10 am to 3 pm on a sunny Tuesday. The TLC has the power to demand data from Uber and Lyft about each and every single driver on their platform and determine if drivers are making a certain average minimum wage or not. With that data (and assuming the TLC is economically rational) it could then make the necessary adjustments with regard to issuance or attrition of driver and vehicle licenses AT THEIR DISCRETION-not the rideshare company’s.
2. Thank God for the NYTWA!! This is an organization that is truly smart, tough in looking out for their members, and obviously not conflicted like IDG. IDG should be ashamed of themselves. I would be on calls with them and I wanted to jump through my Zoom platform and scream in their faces for their utter nonsense ideas that made absolutely no sense. If IDG had their way, we would another 30k EVs on NYC streets and many more drivers would be starving.
3. My understanding is the current City Council has a very “EV good, every other vehicle bad” attitude. This woefully shallow outlook needs education and mountains of patience before more driver businesses are destroyed. A better emphasis, as you mentioned, needs to be made with hybrids. It took over 10 years to make hybrids palatable. Next year all Toyota Camrys will be hybrid for 2025. That’s a milestone. We’re getting to a cleaner environment but let’s not kill driver businesses in the interim to achieve an EV goal that is really unrealistic.
4. I have a vehicle license but I recently had to rent from a rather large rental company, Buggy, for a few weeks. Overall, my experience with them was was very positive. Everything was charged exactly as they said. My deposit was returned without me having to beg and plead for it. They were very professional and friendly. They run a good shop. They gave me oil changes, repairs, renewed the vehicle insurance, made necessary repairs to pass NYS inspection. They told me I could return the vehicle whenever I wanted as long as I gave them one week notice, which I thought was fair. When I would call to say I was going to return the vehicle I’d have to rent it for a longer time and they were completely okay with this. What they charged me was competitive and NOT PREDATORY when you consider what renting a vehicle license with no vehicle is priced at on a monthly basis. In fact, I think their margins might be too thin but they have no choice to have competitive pricing because there is so much competition out there. I would definitely do business with them again and they are in no way compensating me for making these remarks and claims. I merely want to give an actual TLC driver’s experience and testimony with a rather large rental fleet company. I’m sure Chairman Do could have sent a battalion of undercover drivers to come up with similar conclusions and report this back to him.
Thank you, again, for a wonderful piece and for being a sound, detailed, and reasonable mouthpiece in this industry.
Wow! Great detailed commentary! Re. the Camry, we did read the 2025 is only going to be hybrid (like the Sienna). Imagine, TLC could *easily* achieve a 50%+ hybrid FHV/taxi fleet in a few years, but instead they are incentivizing drivers to buy EVs that will be technological obsolete in 3/4 years (vs. EVs of 2027/28) and also likely cause a fair amount of financial stress to many drivers as you point out. Hopefully the more noise is made / pushback published the TLC and City Council will reflect on policy - if they don't then there's going to be a lot of issues, as you know. Appreciate the kind words as well 🙏
"why is the TLC using middle class NYC drivers, many who live paycheck-to-paycheck, as EV adoption guinea pigs".
NYC drivers are so far away from middle class LOL
Perhaps "working class" would have been the better term haha. You would be surprised though, some NYC drivers we know make $100,000+, which might qualify as middle class but you make a fair point!
You’re right. There are some drivers that make over $100k but in order to make that as a basic Uber X/Lyft driver AFTER VEHICLE EXPENSES, you need to work an average of 11-12 or more hours per day every single day of the year. I’ve done the numbers based on my own driving experience and data. These drivers are the exception and not typical.
The “soft” lock outs with lyft have been going on for several months now.
Based on our understanding it’s happening to many more drivers now. Perhaps it was more limited or muted previously. For example, the driver that sent us the screenshot to us said that previously this never happened to them, but guess some sort of new “user / driver agreement” came out 3 weeks ago and since then it’s begun happening to them, when it never happened previously
Hmm interesting. It has been happening to many drivers i know for several months now and I knew immediately why it was happening. If the UR is not going to be effectively enforced i agree that it should eliminated because its of no good atm
Probably even more concerning sign tbh. If more and more drivers are facing this, it probably implies Lyft UR might be getting really bad. This is first time we’re hearing about it from the drivers we know (but they might are more “ full-time” in nature to be fair, so now if it’s hitting them…😬)
Got to give it to them, pretty smart