“We want to lead the way autonomous hardware and software is built in this industry”.
Lyft is mirroring – whether it wants to admit it or not – Uber’s autonomous strategy, though years behind its larger rival and with a shallower bench of talent.
“We’re building a way for third parties to plug their self-driving cars into our network“, said Luc Vincent, vice president of engineering at Lyft. As the Associated Press reports, Lyft announced the launch of their new Level Five engineering division on Thursday, which will consist of about 200 employees by the end of the year, all based in Palo Alto.
Partners could decide to leave the Open Platform Initiative and develop their own software.
Few would disagree that autonomous driving is the future of ground-based transportation; it’s all just a matter of how quickly we get there and who develops the technology.
Now Lyft is jumping in, with the announcement that the USA ride-hailing company will develop its own self-driving technology at a facility in Silicon Valley.
Transportation company Lyft announced Friday it’s launching a self-driving vehicle division and will develop its own ride-hailing technology.
The move comes as its main competitor, ride-hailing giant Uber, runs rudderless after its founder Travis Kalanick resigned last month following a chain of scandals. Ideally, a company like Lyft would love to craft its own self-driving solution (not having to pay a third-party for driving tech would mean more money stays at home) but the time and cost involved in doing so is monumental. It plans to outfit these vehicles with cameras and sensors to collect data that will ultimately train its self-driving cars. The company is considering equipping some vehicles rented to drivers through the Express Drive program with sensors to allow Lyft to collect more data for its self-driving and mapping research.
Both hope to cut losses by replacing human drivers with autonomous vehicles.
TechCrunch notes that Lyft’s strategy may help it more smoothly navigate the rough regulatory waters that are facing autonomous vehicles in the years ahead. But on Thursday, Lyft preached a hybrid system where human drivers will take over self-driving cars for locations and situations deemed too chaotic and hard for machines.
However, Lyft employs a team to work on regulatory matters and has made in-roads in Washington for other issues in the past.
“When a passenger requests a ride that a self-driving auto can complete, we may send one to complete the trip”, he wrote.