Flywheel wants to attract new users, and it’s giving out dirt-cheap rides as a way to do so.
The company, which develops a hailing app for taxi drivers, will offer $5 flat-ride rides up-and-down the West Coast as part of a promotional deal that starts today and ends on April 6.
In Seattle, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, and Sacramento, those using Flywheel will pay just $5 for any ride within city limits.
Flywheel, which reeled in $12 million four months ago, said these promotional rides are “unlike competitors’ promotions that slash prices only for carpooling options.” That’s a dig at Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, all of which are rolling carpooling features within their apps.
“The UberPool and Lyft Line promotions are great in that they’re so cheap, but more often than not you end up tacking 20 minutes onto your travel time to inconveniently share a ride with someone else,” Rakesh Mathur, CEO of Flywheel, said in a statement.
Flywheel is now operating in six U.S. cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, Seattle, San Diego and Sacramento. In an interview with Mathur this past November, the CEO told GeekWire he wants Flywheel to “dominate all major markets in the U.S.”
Mathur also noted that Flywheel has the potential to scale bigger than Uber, which is operating in more than 250 cities worldwide and has raised $5 billion. He said that “there are simply a lot more people taking a taxi.”
“There are 120 million taxi rides per month,” Mathur said. “In terms of revenue, that’s a significantly larger scale than Uber.”
