Lyft’s first ‘robotaxis’ are live in Atlanta

For months, Lyft has watched portion its rival Uber made deals with seemingly each autonomous conveyance operator nether the sun. But the smaller ridehail institution has been softly gathering a fleet of its own, and Lyft is acceptable to motorboat its archetypal customer-ready robotaxi aviator successful Atlanta.

Lyft is teaming up with May Mobility, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based institution that is backed by Toyota and BMW. The fleet is comprised of Toyota Sienna minivans equipped with sensors similar cameras, radar, and lidar. The vehicles volition run connected some metropolis and suburban streets astir Midtown Atlanta successful a work country that is astir 7 square-miles. Lyft customers who petition rides wrong the work country volition beryllium fixed the enactment to lucifer with a May Mobility autonomous conveyance if they choose.

Lyft is besides proceeding cautiously with its archetypal customer-ready AV work successful the US. The vehicles volition diagnostic “standby operators” — Lyft’s word for information drivers — successful the operator seat. These operators are trained to “take the instrumentality and thrust manually during archetypal trips, arsenic needed, and volition intervene little implicit clip arsenic work is optimized,” the company’s property merchandise states. They volition besides reply lawsuit questions and guarantee the thrust is comfortable. In different words, they’re Lyft drivers — that is, until the companies feels assured capable successful the information of their exertion to region them from the vehicle.

The usage of information drivers during the archetypal phases of a robotaxi rollout is reasonably modular by this point. Waymo has utilized them, and Tesla is presently utilizing information monitors successful its 2 markets successful California and Texas. Currently, lone Waymo and Zoox run afloat driverless vehicles without information drivers successful a commercialized service.

Lyft has respective robotaxi partnerships brewing close now, successful summation to today’s motorboat with May Mobility. The institution is working with Benteler Mobility to motorboat a self-driving shuttle service successful precocious 2026. And it plans to deploy a fleet of robotaxis, utilizing self-driving exertion from Intel’s Mobileye, successful Dallas besides successful 2026, with plans to standard to ”thousands” of vehicles successful further markets successful the months to follow.

While its lagged successful the fig of deals down its rival, Lyft is besides taking a akin attack arsenic Uber by offering its ridehail level to antithetic self-driving developers who privation to link with customers without having to physique their ain customer-facing operation. Like Uber, Lyft’s involvement is staying arsenic “asset light” arsenic possible, needing different companies to own, operate, and support the robotaxi fleet for its customers.

Of course, this isn’t Lyft’s archetypal robotaxi rodeo. The ridehail institution had thought to develop its ain autonomous vehicles, but eventually sold disconnected its AV probe and improvement division to a subsidiary of Toyota backmost successful 2021.