Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New Silicon Valley Facility
Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New
Silicon Valley Facility
By MIKE ISAAC JULY 21, 2017
Waymo is among the companies that are becoming partners
in Lyft’s Open Platform Initiative on technology for self-driving cars. Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — Controlling the future of the smartphone
was the defining technology battle of the last decade. Now, technology
companies are betting that the next 10 years and beyond will be spent battling
for control of the self-driving automobile.
On Friday, Lyft, the ride-hailing company, announced that
it was developing its own self-driving technology, marking yet another
company’s gamble that the future of transportation will be marked by
self-driving cars.
Lyft is marking the occasion with the opening of a new
self-driving-research facility in Palo Alto, Calif., and plans to heavily recruit
new engineering and technical people for the facility after it opens in the
coming weeks.
“We aren’t thinking of our self-driving division as a
side project. It’s core to our business,” said Luc Vincent, vice president of
autonomous technology at Lyft. “That’s why 10 percent of our engineers are
already focused on developing self-driving technology — and we’ll continue to
grow that team in the months ahead.”
Uber, Lyft’s much larger rival, has spent millions
opening facilities in Pittsburgh, Toronto and San Francisco dedicated entirely
to autonomous-vehicle research, while building its own hardware and software
systems to operate the vehicles. And many other companies, from Alphabet’s
Waymo unit in Silicon Valley to major auto manufacturers in Detroit and Europe,
are also working on autonomous-driving technology.
Lyft is taking a markedly different approach from Uber.
While Uber’s self-driving plans have mostly been a solo effort, Lyft has
announced what it calls its Open Platform Initiative, a way to develop
autonomous vehicle technology in conjunction with automakers and technology
companies.
“We want to bring the whole industry together with this,
and we think there’s a unique opportunity in time right now for Lyft to become
a leader while doing it,” said Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s chief strategy officer, in a
press event at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
Perhaps the best way to understand the initiative is
through the lens of the smartphone.
Uber’s approach is closer to that of Apple: Both
companies want to control most of the product, whether the software or the
hardware.
Lyft, in contrast, is acting a bit more like Google in
its development of the Android operating system. Both companies are creating
software that many different hardware manufacturers can use, while developing
the technology collaboratively with hardware partners. In Lyft’s ideal world,
that could mean a quicker spread of Lyft’s technology among automakers.
Automakers are scrambling to develop their own
self-driving technology as they imagine how they might operate in a future in
which fewer people own cars. Collaborating with Lyft could help bring that
technology to market faster, while automakers could provide Lyft’s ride-hailing
network with more cars to serve riders.
Lyft is seeing early signs of traction. Early partners
include Waymo, nuTonomy, Jaguar, Land Rover and General Motors. The public details
of the partnerships are scant, but all of the companies have committed to
working together to make self-driving cars commonplace.
There are potential drawbacks. Partners could decide to
leave the Open Platform Initiative and develop their own software. Or companies
could be wary of teaming up with Lyft because it is developing its own
self-driving system.
Lyft executives believe that the self-driving-car race is
in its early days, and that companies that may consider one another rivals
still have much to gain from collaborating and learning while building the
automobile fleets of the future.
“Lyft is not getting into the business of manufacturing a
car,” Mr. Kapoor said. “We’re on our way to creating a self-driving system.
Then the auto industry can bring it to life.”
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