Firefly CEO Says Smart Screen Tech Will Boost Pay for Ridesharing Drivers, Provide Data to Cities
*By Tracey Cheek*
Firefly is a car-top digital smart screen that benefits ridesharing drivers by giving them a new source of income ー and helps their home cities by providing them with new streams of data, the company's CEO told Cheddar.
"We placed digital smart screens on top of taxi and rideshare cars, and thereby we serve location and time-targeted outdoor advertisements, at the same time our smart screen generates a lot of smart screen data which we share back with municipalities and cities," said Firefly's Co-Founder and CEO Kaan Gunay.
Firefly, which launched in December with $21.5 million in funding, has a list of around 8,000 drivers waiting to get on its platform, and only works with full-time drivers. The service is currently only in California, but will be launching in New York soon.
"When you do work with Firefly you can make 15 to 20 percent extra income without having to do anything different," Gunay said. "You drive same amount of time, you drive the same amount of hours."
Investors look at Firefly as a smart city data company and also an out-of-home play, according to its CEO. Along with helping ridesharing drivers boost their pay, the technology helps meet cities' growing need for data. The company launched around the time of the California wildfires, which provided an immediate use case for its technology.
"Initially we ended up launching with pollution information," explained Gunay. "Because our cars on every single street, pretty much on any given moment, we were able to provide real time information of air quality to the Coalition of Clean Air in California."
He said the company is also developing technology to help identify the location of potholes that can also be fed back to municipalities.
The tech start-up has a strict ad policy, so don't expect to be seeing cannabis, tobacco, or strip club ads on these taxis.
"We have a very community-first mentality," said Gunay. "When we're serving alcohol ads, for instance, we're geofencing off schools so that children won't get exposed to that."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/tech-startup-firefly-adds-smart-screens-to-ridesharing).
Joe Cecela, Dream Exchange CEO, explains how they are aiming to form the first minority-controlled company to operate an exchange in U.S. history. Watch!
A Michigan judge is putting sponges in the hands of shoplifters and ordering them to wash cars in a Walmart parking lot when spring weather arrives. Genesee County Judge Jeffrey Clothier hopes the unusual form of community service discourages people from stealing from Walmart. The judge also wants to reward shoppers with free car washes. Clothier says he began ordering “Walmart wash” sentences this week for shoplifting at the store in Grand Blanc Township. He believes 75 to 100 people eventually will be ordered to wash cars this spring. Clothier says he will be washing cars alongside them when the time comes.
The State Department had been in talks with Elon Musk’s Tesla company to buy armored electric vehicles, but the plans have been put on hold by the Trump administration after reports emerged about a potential $400 million purchase. A State Department spokesperson said the electric car company owned by Musk was the only one that expressed interest back in May 2024. The deal with Tesla was only in its planning phases but it was forecast to be the largest contract of the year. It shows how some of his wealth has come and was still expected to come from taxpayers.
At 100 years old, the Goodyear Blimp is an ageless star in the sky. The 246-foot-long airship will be in the background of the Daytona 500 — flying roughly 1,500 feet above Daytona International Speedway, actually — to celebrate its greatest anniversary tour. Even though remote camera technologies are improving regularly and changing the landscape of aerial footage, the blimp continues to carve out a niche. At Daytona, with the usual 40-car field racing around a 2½-mile superspeedway, views from the blimp aptly provide the scope of the event.
You'll just have to wait for interest rates (and prices) to go down. Plus, this deal's a steel, the big carmaker wedding is off, and bribery is back, baby!
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem: Restaurants are struggling with record-high U.S. egg prices, but their omelets, scrambles and huevos rancheros may be part of the problem. Breakfast is booming at U.S. eateries. First Watch, a restaurant chain that serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, nearly quadrupled its locations over the past decade to 570. Fast-food chains like Starbucks and Wendy's added more egg-filled breakfast items. In normal times, egg producers could meet the demand. But a bird flu outbreak that has forced them to slaughter their flocks is making supplies scarcer and pushing up prices. Some restaurants like Waffle House have added a surcharge to offset their costs.
