Lyft's co-founder Within Five years a majority rides will be in self-driving cars.. and personal car ownership will come to an end
EXEC: MOST LYFT RIDES WILL BE IN AUTONOMOUS CARS IN 5
YEARS
BY TOM KRISHER AP AUTO WRITER Sep 18, 6:45 PM EDT
DETROIT (AP) -- Within five years, a majority of
ride-hailing company Lyft's rides will be in self-driving cars, the company's
co-founder and president predicted on Sunday.
John Zimmer also said that personal car ownership will
come to an end because autonomous rides will become a cheaper way to travel
than owning an automobile. He made the predictions in an essay on the future of
transportation in urban areas.
Technology, auto and ride-hailing companies are moving
quickly toward self-driving vehicles. San Francisco-based Lyft is testing
autonomous cars on the streets of San Francisco and Phoenix in partnership with
General Motors. Its main competitor Uber is starting to carry passengers around
Pittsburgh in autonomous cars with a human backup driver.
Zimmer said autonomous cars will start out giving rides
at low speeds, around 25 miles per hour, in limited areas with a number of
restrictions. The cars also won't be able to operate in bad weather. "As
technology improves, these cars will be able to drive themselves in more and
more situations," Zimmer said.
Autonomous cars and ride-hailing will be essential to
helping cities handle an influx of residents in the coming years as the world
becomes more urbanized, he said. Once that happens, there will be less need for
parking, freeing up space for parks and other uses, Zimmer added.
Zimmer's five-year prediction may be overly ambitious
because the technology for cars that carry people on their own likely won't be
ready for at least a decade, said Timothy Carone, a Notre Dame professor and
author of "Future Automation: Changes to Lives and to Businesses."
Instead, Carone predicts that operators in remote
locations will take control of cars if they run into situations they can't
handle, similar to how the military pilots drones.
"Cars in New York or driving on superhighways can be
autonomous but be monitored by someone at an Uber or Lyft center who can
monitor many cars at once," Carone said.
The prospect of autonomous cars will change the business
models for both Uber and Lyft, which now let riders use cellphone apps to
summon independent human drivers with their own cars. It's likely the
ride-hailing companies would own the self-driving cars, which would cut their
biggest expense, payments to drivers.
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Nice article! keep up the good work.
ReplyDeletelyft clone