Americans Are Driving Less and Carpooling More as Gas Hits $4.56. Here's 1 Stock Built for This Moment.

The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline hit $4.55 on May 7, 2026 -- up $1.40 from a year ago and at its highest level since the 2022 energy crisis, according to AAA. In California, drivers are paying $6.11 a gallon. 50% of Americans expect prices to keep climbing through 2027, according to a recent Ipsos poll.

Behavior is already shifting. That same survey found 44% of adults have cut back on driving, 34% have changed vacation plans, and where public transit exists, ridership is rising. There was also a 40% jump in carpooling platform rides from February to March alone.

Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) is the direct beneficiary of that shift -- and it's trading like the market hasn't noticed.

Lyft just reported Q1 2026 gross bookings of $4.9 billion, up 19% year over year, with active riders at a record 28.3 million -- the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit rider growth. Revenue came in at $1.7 billion, up 14%, and trailing-12-month free cash flow crossed $1.1 billion for the first time in company history. When gas is expensive, people abandon solo car trips. Lyft is where those trips go.

CEO David Risher called Q1 results the continuation of a "customer-obsessed comeback," and the metrics back that up. The platform is also deepening its moat through partnerships: nearly 27% of North American rides now tie to a partner arrangement -- an all-time high -- with programs through JPMorgan Chase, DoorDash, and United Airlines driving bookings that originate outside the Lyft app entirely.

Image source: Getty Images.

The part of Lyft that the market is pricing wrong

Despite the momentum, Lyft trades near $14 -- roughly 31% below the Wall Street consensus price target of $19.43, and well off its 52-week high of $26. TD Cowen maintains a Buy rating, and the stock trades at a forward P/E about 13.5 -- cheap for a business generating record free cash flow with visible rider growth.

The deeper optionality is Flexdrive -- Lyft's fleet management arm, which operates 24 depots managing roughly 15,000 vehicles across North America. This fall, Lyft will open an 80,000-square-foot purpose-built facility in Nashville to manage Waymo's autonomous vehicle fleet. That is a physical depot already under construction, with a charged customer and a launch date. If robotaxis scale, Lyft earns fees without bearing vehicle costs -- a fundamentally different margin structure from today's driver-dependent model.

It's important to note that Lyft is nowhere close in size to Uber Technologies. Uber is massive. Lyft lacks global scale, and its EPS missed estimates in Q1. The economics of autonomous vehicle fleets remain unproven at scale. Any stall in the rider's growth trajectory would close the gap between the current price and fair value faster than in the bull case.

But the setup right now is clean: gas is expensive, people are driving less, Lyft's core metrics are at records, free cash flow is real, and the stock is below analyst targets. This is a solid long-term buy.

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Micah Zimmerman has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends DoorDash, JPMorgan Chase, Lyft, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.