Lyft zooms past one million total rides!

The ride sharing service has racked up over 4 million miles in seven cities across the country

Look out Uber: there's a new sheriff in town, and its name is Lyft. 

The ride-sharing company hit a major milestone on Thursday, surpassing its one millionth ride, the company announced in a blog post.

"It’s official! Thanks to our incredible drivers and passengers around the country, one million Lyft rides have been shared since our launch last year," the company wrote.

"The millionth ride happened in Lyft’s very own hometown of San Francisco. Lyft community driver (and local musician) Marshall and passenger Kristina shared a ride that, little did they know, would go down in Lyft history. Big fistbumps to Marshall, Kristina and the entire Lyft community for making one million rides a reality."

In celebration of the news, Lyft put together a handy infographic to highlight some of its other statistics that the company has racked up in its first million rides.

These include over 4 million miles driven, which, according to Lyft is enough to go to the moon and back eight times. (I don't doubt the math, I'm just too lazy to go and check it.)

Over 66,000 of Lyft's rides were made by passengers and drivers with mutual friends, and 73% of its drivers also use the service as passengers as well. 

And then there are the funny stats/anecdotes, like the 1,406 cellphones that were lost, and then returned, in Lyft cars (seriously, people?). And the two drivers who helped a Seattle passenger propose to his fiancee (how romantic?) and the passenger who brought his driver, who was his neighbor 14 years, some homemade ice cream.

But, most importantly to Lyft, 95% of those one million rides were rated 5 stars. And that is a very impressive stat.

The road to being Lyft

The company now known as Lyft was originally named Zimride, and it was launched by Logan Green and John Zimmer in 2007.

Zimride was an online service that connected passengers and drivers via their Facebook profiles to share the cost of a road trip. The service became especially popular with college students, and was able to raise $7.5 million by September 2011, including $1.2 million in seed funding from Floodgate, K9 Ventures, and various angels and then another $6 million in a Series A round of funding led by The Mayfield Fund, with participation from Floodgate and K9 Ventures.

As Zimride grew, the company then decided to launch a ride-sharing service, called Lyft, in May 2012. That proved to be the turning point, as Lyft turned out to be more popular than Zimride. Lyft quickly became where the company put its focus and Zimride officially changing its name to Lyft in May, the same month it raised $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz.

Last month, Lyft finally sold off the Zimride product for good to Enterprise Holdings for an undisclosed amount.

Lyft is available in seven cities across the country: San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Seattle, Chicago, Boston and Washington D.C.

See the full infographic celebrating the one million rides below:

(Image source: https://blog.lyft.me)