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Lyft offers freebies to encourage people to ditch their cars

If you’re a Lyft rider in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Chicago and you’re selling your car anytime soon, then you could be in line for some freebies from the ridesharing company.

As part of its ongoing quest to try to persuade folks to give up their vehicles and use alternative ways of getting around, Lyft is offering $250 of ride credits and three months’ free membership of its recently launched Lyft Pink subscription service to riders who sell their car through online retailer Carvana.

Here’s how it works:

  • Select riders in the cities listed above will receive an email with details of the offer, which runs through December 16, 2019.
  • In the email, you’ll find a link to a page explaining the steps you’ll need to take to sell your vehicle in order to receive Lyft’s ride credits and three months’ free membership of Lyft Pink.
  • Once the sale of your vehicle is complete, Carvana will send you a check for your vehicle, together with $250 of ride credits straight to your Lyft account and details regarding the Lyft Pink membership.

The San Francisco-based company acknowledges that there’s nothing stopping you from putting the cash you get from your vehicle sale toward the purchase of another vehicle (and still walking away with the perks), though of course doing such a thing would be going against the spirit of the offer.

Lyft’s offer is the latest iteration of its Ditch Your Car campaign aimed at reducing car ownership and easing traffic congestion in major cities. In a program that ran throughout September 2018, Lyft says it successfully encouraged more than 120,000 participants to stop using their personal car for a period of 30 days and instead use alternatives such as ridesharing services, rentable electric scooters and bicycles, and more traditional forms of public transport.

Lyft also claims it persuaded around a quarter of a million people to ditch their cars in favor of ridesharing services in 2017, while last year almost half of its riders said they use their cars less because of Lyft, with 22% reporting that owning a car had become less important.

The company says it’s considering expanding its latest offer beyond Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, and encourages anyone interested to sign up on its website.

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