What's the Best Rideshare Insurance?

This is the question I was asked in an email yesterday.

As I no longer do any rideshare driving, I decided to put the question to other Rideshare Guy members.

Here's the original email to me:

"do you have any suggestion for best uber insurance in Melbourne thanks"

Here's what I sent out:

Become a Passenger Pickup Expert

What kind of a driver are you? Have you mastered the most important thing that we do, the passenger pickup? There  can be so many complications: Passenger’s not ready. Bus zones. Double parking. These are the things that we’re going to cover in this video.

Stick around because, at the end of the video, he's going to share with you the number one tool we have to become an expert at the passenger pickup. Scroll to the video transcript below to read the points covered in the video.

This video is from a US based driver, so you can ignore references to Lyft.

And when he talks about planning your pickup so that your passenger is on the right, that's because they drive on the right side of the road. For here, it's on the left, of course.

Rideshare in the U.S.

Here's some rideshare stuff happening in the U.S.

Some frightening, like the young driver being shot at over a $10 McDonald's delivery.

Some Covid-19 related, like face recognition software being employed to ensure passengers are wearing masks.

And some interesting, like all of the new rideshare startups in response to Uber and Lyft's legal stoushes.

Thank you to all the extra drivers who added their results to the survey since they were first published yesterday. There were some significant changes, so I've republished them here.

This chart reflects increased pessimism. The original chart showed 64% reported that their rideshare business was worse or much worse because of the pandemic. This has increased to a whopping 78%.

Please Complete This Short Rideshare Survey

I believe that there are three primary criteria for an electric vehicle to become mainstream in Australia.

1. Cost

On the road cost to be less than $50K. Closer to $40K would seal the deal.

2. Range

A range of at least 400 km. Closer to 500 km would be better.

3. Charging

There's a lot to like about the 2019 second-generation Nissan Leaf. But is it enough to convince an Uber driver to swap to an EV?

2nd Generation Nissan Leaf

To me, one of the most attractive things about the new second-generation Leaf, Nissan's latest venture into the EV market is that it doesn't look like an electric vehicle.

It doesn't look like its design criterion was to come up with something that looks really quirky and your colour choices aren't restricted to hot pink or fluorescent green. In fact, it looks just like an attractive, up market, highly spec'd, regular hatchback that just happens to be a totally quiet high performer with zero emissions.

But is it enough to convince you to switch from internal combustion to electric?

I Don't Know Whether to Laugh or Cry

What about this recent story?

A driver was recently reported as asking his rider for her phone so he could "make a route alteration".

The passenger reported that he did something really quick with the phone and then handed it back to her.

The "really quick" thing that he'd done was to end the trip and give himself a 5-star rating, followed by a generous tip of $100! Now that's taking the self-employment concept a bit too far.

Umm... there is another word for that - it's called stealing.

There's an EV in Your Future

Like it or not, there's an EV (Electric Vehicle) in your future. Perhaps your very next car, perhaps the one after that.

For EVs to take off in Australia, we need at least two of these things to happen:

A car to arrive, almost certainly from Japan or Korea, that fires our imagination and that also has a range between charges of a comfortable 500 kms.