In the recent few months, ridesharing taxi app Uber has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Earlier in the year, taxi drivers in Paris launched a strong protest against Uber which spiraled out of control, and now London black-cabs are planning for a similar agitation. To make things worse, rival ridesharing service Lyft is stepping up the ante and using the newly acquired funds to pimp its rides. Lyft rolled out a premium peer-to-peer car service last Thursday in a challenge to Uber’s luxury black car and SUV rides, and to customize its rides the company partnered with none other than West Cost Customs, the customization shop made famous by MTV reality show “Pimp My Ride.”
Named the Lyft Plus, the forthcoming premium SUV service will cost twice as much as normal Lyfts and will start with San Francisco with other US cities joining in soon. Guys at West Cost Customs customized a number of Ford Explorers specifically for Lyft, complete with a brushed-steel mustache insignia pinned to the grilles, diamond-stitched leather interiors and LED lights underneath the car that light up the ground. “We wanted to give it a wow factor,” Ethan Eyler, the creative lead on Lyft’s new rides, said about the company’s decision to invest in tricked-out vehicles. “You look at the stodgy old town car and to us it just feels so stodgy and old.”
[Via – Cnet]
