The Silicon Review ^Asia

The online ride-sharing company app, Lyft, has been going through various tussles with their rival company Uber. Presumably, what we assume is their next move; Lyft recently revealed that they have acquired Motivate, the largest bike-sharing company in North America.

Motivate, who is one of the oldest companies in the bike-sharing market, runs its operations in various cities like New York, Washington DC and San Francisco as CitiBike, Capital Bikeshare, and Ford GoBike respectively. Lyft is reported to have offered a sum of 250 million dollars for Motivate after Uber recently took over Motivate’s biggest rival company, Jump for around 200 million dollars in April.

Although the bike-sharing venture is not as profitable as expected, there is still a huge demand for these services amongst urban dwellers that prefer to take the bicycle or scooter to avoid the growing congestion of fast-moving vehicles. In order to manage costs for the same, these companies have been trying to inculcate the most cost-effective methods by partnering with China-based manufactures. In 2014, Motivate is said to have recorded more than 1.8 million rides in New York City alone with their CitiBike venture and yet it barely managed to break even.

With the increasing concern of climate change due to carbon emissions, Lyft has committed themselves to a number of goals that would have a profound impact on saving the planet. They are doing so by making all their rides carbon neutral which leads to a reduction of emissions in the manufacturing process itself by employing various programs for renewable energy, forestry projects and capturing other emissions from landfills.