On-demand taxis could go driverless, thanks to Lyft
US ride-share startup Lyft is working on a self-driving vehicle platform
US ride-share startup Lyft on Friday dedicated a new team focused on speeding up its effort to create a self-driving vehicle platform, which would be open to use by other companies.
The San Francisco based company earlier this year announced what it billed as the world’s first open self-driving platform, inviting car manufacturers and rival autonomous navigation systems to plug into the network.
“In the years ahead, we will continue to bring the world’s leading automotive and technology companies onto this single platform to serve a nationwide passenger network,” Lyft vice president of engineering and former Google executive Luc Vincent said in an online post.
“We aren’t thinking of our self-driving division as a side project; it’s core to our business.”
Lyft is devoting an in-house division to self-driving technology, according to Vincent.
The team will be based in a Silicon Valley facility called “Level 5 Engineering Center” and its ranks will grow in coming months, the company said.
Lyft operates in 350 cities in the US, and plans to run its own self-driving cars on the network, which partners will be free to use and learn from.
“Because we’re doing all of this on an open platform, it won’t just enhance Lyft’s self-driving system,” Vincent said.