Lyft is expanding the types of services it provides through its on-demand transportation network in an effort to boost efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The company announced that it will be offering delivery of critical medical supplies to individuals who need them during this time, including the elderly and those living with chronic diseases, and that it will be delivering meals to students who ordinarily get subsidized lunches through school, as well as seniors.

The new efforts are detailed in a blog post by the ride-hailing company, and also include expanding its existing medical transportation services for anyone that needs to get to critical healthcare appointments and treatments, while dealing with the extra strain put on the healthcare system by the coronavirus pandemic. It had already been offering non-emergency medical transportation, for people (especially those with lower income) who don’t need an ambulance but otherwise benefit from on-demand transportation options for care.

Lyft’s new meal delivery option is beginning with just a small pilot in the San Francisco Bay Area, and will focus on picking up meals from centralized distribution centers facilitated by government agencies to provide food for specific home-bound seniors and low-income students who rely on state-sponsored meal options. This isn’t a meal delivery service like Uber Eats, but rather a triaged means of providing an essential service, and Lyft hopes to eventually scale the program to address more of California, and eventually possibly markets across the U.S.

These measures definitely send like they will increase access to crucial services for the groups and individuals most impacted by the current shelter-in-place, quarantine and isolation measures enacted in light of the coronavirus pandemic. On the driver side, there are naturally concerns that come into play since they’ll be at increased risk due to greater exposure vs. people who are sheltering at home, but Lyft says that it’s taking advanced precautions to help ensure the safety of its driver community, including offering funds to any drivers diagnosed with COVID-19, or put into formal quarantine as a result of their exposure by a public health agency.

Lyft and Uber are continuing to offer their regular ride-hailing services as well, though Uber has said that ride volume is down as much as 70 percent in the cities most affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Both companies have also suspended their shared ride options as a way to ensure that their services adhere to CDC guidelines regarding social distancing as much as possible.

In the latest effort to tighten travel restrictions to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, President Trump has ordered the closure of the border between the U.S. and Mexico to all but essential travel. This move follows an announcement earlier this week that both America and Canada agreed mutually to close their shared border to non-essential travel for at least 30 days, while it remains open for urgent, necessary business and commercial traffic.

Trump had also already taken steps to minimize border crossing at the Mexican border, taking additional steps to block migrants and asylum seekers on top of what measures are are already in place, as reported by CNN earlier this week. The U.S. also issued a “do not travel” warning to its own citizens on Thursday, which broadly advises against traveling to any international destination. Trump has also said that internal travel restrictions are not out of the question pending the pandemic’s progress.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the closure of the U.S.-Mexican border on Friday, noting that it was decided in collaboration with the Mexican government. Earlier on Friday, Trump said that the U.S. with Mexico, are suspending “non-essential travel,” not related to trade and commerce, at all ports of entry, which mirrors the moves made with Canada. He added that Mexico is also suspending air travel from Europe, which will help “protect the southern border” of the U.S. as well.

Trump added that both the Canadian and Mexican borders are being treated equally in this instance, in terms of the actions taken to limit cross-border travel.

Developing…

Waymo has extended the partial suspension of its autonomous vehicle service pilots to include fully driverless vehicle testing, the company confirmed on Friday. While Alphabet-owned Waymo had already stopped operation of the autonomous driving vehicles in its fleet that have safety drivers on board, in the interest of minimizing the potential spread of coronavirus, it was still going to go ahead with rides in its fully driverless test vehicles.

These fully driverless vehicles are used in it Phoenix pilot program for public ride-hailing customers, as well as for its local delivery services. The company’s decision to cease even these operations likely reflects the consistently heightened nature of the COVID-19 situation in the U.S., which has resulted in increasingly strict travel and working restrictions across various states since Waymo made its original decision on Tuesday.

Along with Waymo, other companies that have paused their AV testing include Cruise, Argo AI, Pony.ai, Uber and others.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Uber and Lyft have been on quite a ride this year. After enjoying modest gains earlier this year thanks to an improved profitability forecast from Uber, the two companies saw their share prices gain ground after a difficult 2019. Then COVID-19 began to shutter the world, pushing its share prices so low that we recently felt compelled to write about their declines; losses that steep are material and can negatively impact private, on-demand startups as they hunt for new capital or an exit.

But then, late this week, it all turned around. Yesterday, Uber’s shares rose 38% and are up another 9% in pre-market trading. Similarly, Lyft rose 29% yesterday and is up nearly 8% this morning. What drove the up for American ride-hailing? An analyst call that Uber held yesterday, in which it told analysts that it has enough cash to get through just about anything in 2020. Ingrid Lunden covered the news as it happened for TechCrunch.

This morning let’s unpack what the company said and ask if it’s reasonable that investors are pushing Lyft higher alongside Uber. Then we’ll check the two firm’s new revenue multiples and think about what they mean for on-demand startups looking for capital or an IPO. Let’s go.

American Airlines today announced that it will fly a handful of cargo-only flights to Europe, using its standard 777-300 passenger planes, over the course of the next few days. The company says these flights will carry medical supplies, mail for active U.S. military, telecommunications equipment and electronics, as well as packages from e-commerce firms.

This marks the first time American is operating cargo-only flights since 1984, when it retired its last 747 freighter (one of those retired planes, by the way, was then modified to carry NASA’s shuttle on its back).

By default, virtually all airlines carry cargo on their domestic and international flights. American, for example, notes that it shipped over 400 tons of flowers from Amsterdam to the U.S. in the two weeks around Valentine’s day. As airlines started shrinking their operations in light of various travel restrictions and plummeting customer demand during the current COVID-19 outbreak, that cargo capacity shrunk, too, even though there is still plenty of demand for moving cargo between countries. As of now American and the other major U.S. airlines have suspended the majority of their international long-haul flights.

“We have a critical role to play in keeping essential goods moving during this unprecedented time, and we are proud to do our part and find ways to continue to serve our customers and our communities,” said Rick Elieson, President of Cargo and Vice President of International Operations at American. “Challenging times call for creative solutions, and a team of people across the airline has been working nonstop to arrange cargo-only flight options for our customers.”

For now, American only plans to make two round trips between Dallas and Frankfurt over the course of the next four days. “The flights provide much-needed cargo capacity for many of the airline’s regular cargo customers, allowing them to continue operating in this challenging environment,” the company says in its announcement.

Delta, too, recently announced that it would use some of its grounded passenger planes to move cargo as well. As airlines continue to grapple with the fallout of this pandemic, we’ll likely see more of them do this in the coming weeks.

In another example for the farreaching effects of the coronavirus outbreak, the FAA today said that it is temporarily closing the tower at Midway Airport, the second largest airport in the Chicago area. In a statement, the FAA says that that several technicians at the facility tested positive for COVID-19. For a while, there was a ground stop in effect for Midway and no flights could take off to land at the airport.

In its statement, FAA notes that the airport remains open and that operations will continue at a reduced rate.

“The air traffic system is a resilient system with multiple backups in place. This shift is a regular execution of a longstanding contingency plan to ensure continued operations. Each facility across the country has a similar plan that has been updated and tested in recent years,” the FAA says in a statement. How exactly the airport will operate without a working control tower is unclear, though. Smaller airports often revert to being uncontrolled fields after the tower closes at night and have procedures in place for this. That’s not typically the case for large airports like Midway, though, which are staffed 24/7.

The largest airline at Midway is Southwest Airlines, though Delta Air Lines also flies there.

In a separate statement, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the labor union for aviation safety professionals, asks that all who work at the tower should be tested for the disease. “NATCA is adamant that the testing must occur immediately and is hopeful there will be no additional COVID-19 infections. We are encouraged that the FAA is pursuing the rapid testing of all personnel at [Midway] Tower,” the organization writes.

Uber has suspended its shared ‘Uber Pool’ class of rides, the company announced on Tuesday. The Uber Pool option would match up to three passengers together in one vehicle based on their destination, and Uber said in a statement from Uber Rides and Platform Vice President Andrew Macdonald that the company’s “goal is to help flatten the curve on community spread in the cities we serve” through suspension of the service.

This applies in the U.S. and Canada for now, and the company is evaluating enacting similar measures in other countries where pooled rides are an option. Meanwhile, regular Uber on-demand rides for individual bookings, as well a Uber Eats delivery services, will still be operating as before. Uber did institute a new persistent in-app message for its ride-hailing app for riders, however, labelled “Flatten the Curve” and advising users to “travel only if necessary,” and to “exercise caution for your safety and the safety of our community.”

Uber also announced that its Uber Eats program will waive the delivery fee for local restaurants in the U.S. and Canada, as well as allowing requests for food to be left at the doorstep by delivery couriers. It’s also committing to deliver over 300,000 meals to healthcare workers and first responders working on the front line of the epidemic.

In addition to these measures, Uber is also offering financial assistance to drivers on its platform t hat are infected by COVID-19 and put into quarantine by a public health authority, with a a payment structure based on the average earning of the driver over the past six months.

NASA is supplementing its standard protocols and processes for ensuring the health of the astronauts meant to take part in the initial commercial crew spaceflight program with added measures designed to protect them against the possibility of contracting COVID-19, Business Insider reports. Already, it’s standard practice for the U.S. space agency to institute practices designed to reduce the chances any crew flying to space will contract any illnesses on the ground prior to their trip, but extra steps are now in place to specifically address coronavirus risks.

BI’s report notes the added measures in place in addition to the standard two-week quarantine leading up to the commercial crew mission, which is currently set to take place sometime in either April, May or June aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. These include an improved emphasis on surface cleaning and disinfection, social distancing and hand cleaning, all of which is in keeping with the CDC’s recommendations when it comes to prevention among the general population.

NASA has also suspended tours at the facilities where the astronauts, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, undergo training ahead of their flight, and it’s asking its own staff to say home if they have any felling that they might potentially be sick to further limit potential exposure.

Health of anyone tasked with traveling to, and working while in space, is obviously paramount. NASA’s existing procedures, which include extensive testing and monitoring leading up to the actual flights, have a great track record of preventing anyone from taking any unwanted viral guests on their trips to space. Coronavirus may present a new challenge to the agency’s precautionary measures, but it shouldn’t functionally differ all that much from the other viral illnesses that astronauts typically seek to avoid before a mission.

Airbnb has announced updates to its policies that provide reservation cancellations without charge for stays booked in specific areas, as a result of the current state of the global coronavirus pandemic. Guests that booked reservations through Airbnb in mainland China, South Korea, Italy and the United States are now eligible to cancel their stays without incurring any fees.

The policy, detailed by Airbnb on their newsroom page, specifies that for bookings made in the U.S., it applies to all reservations booked before and including today, March 13, that have a check-in date of April 1, 2020 or earlier. This time-bounding seems reasonable, since it’s basically covering bookings made by people uninformed about the situation in the U.S. and extending to an endpoint that fits with most of the existing measures being taken by states and communities around social distancing and travel limitations. Airbnb also notes in its news release that it’ll continue to assess the situation, meaning the specifics of its extenuating circumstances coverage could change.

In addition to the specific countries mentioned above, Airbnb is also extending the no-charge cancellation policy to anyone from the U.S. who has a reservation in Europen’s Schengen Area, and to anyone globally, including both hosts and guests, who has to cancel a reservation:

• In order to comply with disease control restrictions implemented by relevant governmental or health authorities
• In order to perform medical or disease control duties in connection with the COVID-19 outbreak;
• As a result of flight or ground transportation cancellations initiated by an airline or ground transportation provider due to the COVID-19 outbreak;
• In the event that they are diagnosed or suspected of being infected with COVID-19 by a medical or health authority.

This is a pretty laudable coverage policy by Airbnb that would seem to cover just about anyone whose travel plans are directly affected by the coronavirus pandemic. That said, it’s likely that anyone considering any kind of global travel is at least reconsidering their plans – including any and all Airbnb bookings.

With the White House’s surprise decision to bar foreign nationals from Europe from entering the United States, the already battered airline industry is facing yet another challenge. Unsurprisingly, we are now seeing even more cancellation across the industry as even U.S. citizen and legal permanent residents can now only enter the United States through 11 CDC-approved airports.

The approved airports are Atlanta (ATL), Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), Detroit (DTW), Newark (EWR), Honolulu (HNL), New York-JFK (JFK), Los Angeles (LAX), Chicago-O’Hare (ORD), Seattle (SEA), San Francisco (SFO) and Washington-Dulles (IAD). All of these are major hub airports that also currently certified to handle flights from China, but in recent years, a lot of airlines added direct international flights from smaller fields as well.

As Delta announced today, it’ll temporarily cancel flights between cities like Amsterdam and Orlando, Portland and Salt Lake City, for example, as well as flights to Paris from Cincinnati, Raleigh/Durham and Indianapolis. These flights will still operate from the U.S. on Thursday and then return one last time on Friday.

American Airlines tells me it is still working through this “evolving situation,” but it’ll surely be forced to make similar cuts as it also operates European flights to airports that are not on the CDC’s list. Lufthansa and others are also in the process of canceling their flight schedules to smaller airports. Even before this announcement, Lufthansa alone canceled 23,000 flights.

You can find all of our coverage of Covid-19 here.

Commercial aviation isn’t typically the place to look if you’re after carbon-light initiatives. Jet fuel isn’t generally very green, and airplanes burn a lot of it when traversing the skies. But supersonic flight startup Boom wants to change the perception of commercial aviation as an emissions costly prospect, starting with their testing development program for the XB-1 supersonic demonstration aircraft that will eventually lead to the development of its Overture passenger aircraft.

Boom claims this will make it the first commercial flight OEM to achieve this level of sustainability, especially from the very beginning of its aircraft flight testing and certification process. And while XB-1 (and eventually, Overture) aren’t electric or hybrid aircraft, the way the company hopes to achieve this milestone is through a combination of using sustainable jet fuel and carbon offsets (effectively the process of buying carbon ‘credits’ by funding projects that net reduce greenhouse gases) are to reduce its overall carbon footprints to zero.

The fuel that Boom is using comes from partner Prometheus Fuel, which is a company that uses electricity from renewable power sources, like solar and wind, to turn CO2 scrubbed from the air into jet fuel. Already, Boom has tested this fuel in use during some of its initial ground tests, and its findings indicate that it should be able to use them effectively through both the remainder of ground testing, as well as into its flight program.

While there is some debate about the overall validity and efficacy of carbon offsets, provided that money from these programs is funnelled into the proper initiatives, they do seem to result in more ecological harm than not. And any attempt to offset the economic impact of a flight program like Boom’s especially if it’s carried through to flying production aircraft, should be better for the environment than had no attempt been made whatsoever. Which, by the way, is the case for most new aircraft development programs.

Already, Boom is in the process of building the XB-1, which it will then flight test in partnership with Flight Research during a program in the Mojave Desert at the Mojave Air and Space Port. The goal is to begin testing during this summer, and eventually use the information gathered from the XB-1 program (which will be able to hold a pilot but no passengers) to build out the final Overture aircraft that will offer commercial passenger supersonic flight services. Boom has secured agreements with a number of airlines for pre-orders for Overture, including JAL and Virgin.

Hot Wheels will ship you a Cybertruck long before Tesla is likely to make any deliveries on their electric retro-future wheels trapezoid: The toy maker just unveiled two different RC Cybertruck models, including a 1:64 scale model at just $20 – and a much larger 1:10 scale version for $400.

These are available to pre-order now, but like most of Tesla’s cars, just because they’re introduced doesn’t mean you can go out and buy one immediately. They’re set to ship in time for the holidays, however, with a December 15, 2020 estimated availability date according to the Hot Wheels website.

These look like very faithful representation of the Cybertruck that Tesla unveiled at a special event back in November, and the large version includes a “reusable cracked window vinyl sticker” that you can use to recreate the on-stage flub that happened at the actual reveal. You’ll have to supply your own large metal medicine ball.

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Other features of the 1:10 scale Cybertruck including functioning headlights and taillights, all-wheel drive, true to form ‘Chill’ and ‘Sport’ modes, a removable tonneau cover, a working telescopic tailgate and more.

The smaller and much more affordable version is just 3-inches long, which is basically what you’d expect from a traditional Hot Wheels mini model, and it can achieve a “up to 500mph scale speed” which someone who is better than me at math can figure out what that translates to.

These are available now, to people in the U.S. and Canada, but I expect them to be pretty hot sellers based on the general fervor and interest around all things Cybertruck to date.