Sidecar, Onetime Uber Competitor, to Shut Down New Year's Eve

It's the end of the road for Sidecar. The ride-service company's co-founders announced today it would cease operations on New Year's Eve.

At one point, Sidecar -- along with Uber and Lyft -- was one of the Big 3 ride-hailing firms. When we first started covering the industry in November 2013, we spoke to a driver who said he made an average of $30 an hour driving 20-25 hours per week for the company.

“I just had my 1,000th ride this year and I love it,” he said.

But the good times didn't last. In 2014 I talked to one driver who simultaneously worked for all three companies; he said he received nary a customer from Sidecar over a weeklong period. Eventually, the media stopped mentioning the company alongside Uber and Lyft.

Today Sidecar co-founders Sunil Paul and Jahan Khanna said in a post on Medium that the company would end both its ride and delivery service, the latter of which it launched in February.

"Today is a turning point for Sidecar as we prepare to end our ride and delivery service so we can work on strategic alternatives and lay the groundwork for the next big thing," Paul and Khanna wrote. "We will cease ride and delivery operations at 2 p.m. Pacific Time, December 31."

Perhaps it's an indication of just how little business Sidecar was doing that it will terminate its ride-service hours before the rush of New Year's Eve, perhaps the biggest transportation-for-hire night of the year.

Paul and Khanna did not specify what "the next big thing"  might be.

"This is the end of the road for the Sidecar ride and delivery service," they wrote, "but it’s by no means the end of the journey for the company."

After beta testing in San Francisco in 2011, Sidecar formally launched in 2012, portraying itself as "the first on-demand rideshare community."