Lyft to offer self-driving rides in self-driving cars in San Francisco area
Lyft to offer rides in self-driving cars in San Francisco
area
By Heather Somerville SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 / 6:00 AM /
UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 7 (Reuters) - A self-driving car will
soon be one ride option available from Lyft in the San Francisco Bay Area, as
the ride-services company ramps up its efforts to become a serious player in
autonomous vehicle technology.
Lyft said on Thursday that self-driving cars will soon be
dispatched to certain passengers who request a ride through the app in the
area. The cars will come from Drive.ai, a Mountain View, California, startup
that builds software to turn cars into autonomous vehicles.
It is the latest in a string of partnerships between Lyft
and an autonomous car company, but it is the one with the most immediate impact
to Lyft passengers. There will be initially a small number of cars available,
said Drive.ai Co-founder and President Carol Reiley, each with a trained driver
in the front seat in case something goes wrong.
“We want to make sure the experience feels as much like
an autonomous vehicle experience as possible,” Reiley said.
Passengers must choose to opt into the program and the
rides are free. Reiley declined to disclose the car model being used or
precisely when the self-driving Lyft rides would start. Lyft declined to
comment further.
The program allows Lyft to test how its passengers react
to self-driving cars and Drive.ai, a two-year-old company, to log more miles and
tweak its software. Reiley said Drive.ai will use its own mapping data for the
trips.
The program is Lyft’s latest push into autonomous cars
since announcing in July a new self-driving car division, including a facility
in Palo Alto, California with hundreds of engineers who will work on autonomous
technology and collaborate with other autonomous vehicle companies.
Lyft has previously announced partnerships with Alphabet
Inc’s self-driving division, Waymo, technology company Nutonomy, and automakers
General Motors Co and Jaguar Land Rover. Lyft has previously said it will
launch a pilot with Nutonomy in Boston by year-end.
Although Lyft is a late entry into the field of
autonomous cars, the partnership gives the company something of a victory over
its chief competitor, Uber Technologies Inc. While Uber was first to offer
rides in self-driving cars, using its own autonomous technology, with programs
in Pennsylvania and Arizona, it does not yet offer them to passengers in the
Bay Area. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Interesting! Keep up the good work and nice post about app like lyft.
ReplyDelete