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Lyft appears to be hoping to catch up to Uber’s string of self-driving vehicle partnerships.
Lyft on Wednesday announced three separate partnerships — with startup May Mobility, automated driving company Mobileye, and smart camera company Nexar — all aimed at creating a foothold in the emerging autonomous vehicle market.
In the announcement, the ride-hailing company said it has signed a deal with May Mobility to launch self-driving vehicles on the Lyft app starting in Atlanta in 2025. Lyft also announced a partnership with Intel-owned Mobileye that will allow certain AV-equipped vehicles to leverage the ride-hailing app Plus a data sharing agreement with Nexar designed to give OEMs and operators better insights into training autonomous driving systems.
This isn’t the first time Lyft has delved into self-driving vehicles. The company previously offered robotaxi service — always with a human safety driver behind the wheel — in Las Vegas through a partnership with Motional. It had a similar agreement in Austin and Miami with Argo AI. However, Motional paused that partnership in May after cutting its workforce, shutting down Argo AI in 2022. Lyft had a stake in Argo, and received $135.7 million when the company collapsed.
Meanwhile, Uber has been busy closing deals with top autonomous vehicle companies across the taxi, delivery and shipping industry, including Waymo, Cruise, Avride, Serv Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi and others.
May Mobility + Lyft, starting in 2025
May Mobility has made a name for itself by offering small, independent transportation services mainly in geographic areas across the United States. The startup’s shuttles operate on campus and at specific stops along established routes in cities such as Ann Arbor, Michigan, Arlington, Virginia, Peachtree Corners in Atlanta, Miami, and Sun City, Arizona. In May 2023, May Mobility launched an on-demand service in Grand RapidsMichigan in partnership with Via.
“Partnering with Lyft will open up new markets for us to operate in, giving greater mobility to more people, more quickly,” Edwin Olson, co-founder and CEO of May Mobility, said in a statement.
Lyft’s multi-year partnership is May’s first foray into ride-hailing. May Mobility and Lyft did not say when the autonomous vehicles will be deployed, how many May Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles will hit the streets, or whether May will offer group rides, shuttles, or individual on-demand transportation.
In a statement, May noted that initial deployments will use safety drivers in the front seat, with plans to transition to fully driverless driving over time.
Create a “Lyft-ready” Mobileye network.
Mobileye offers self-driving technology across a wide range of self-driving systems, from advanced Level 2 driver assistance systems to full Level 4 self-driving systems. Mobileye Drive, the company’s L4 system, consists of everything from self-driving software to a sensor suite to cloud infrastructure with the digital twin of the world.
“The next step for us is to use this Mobileye Drive cloud, or demand gateway as we call it, to connect to different ride-sharing, ride-aggregation, and public transit networks in the world,” said Christian Lichtmanker, Head of Global Transportation and Public Transport. AV in Mobileye’s Mobility-as-a-Service business development unit, told TechCrunch.
In other words, any fleet of vehicles that already has Mobileye Drive on board — which today includes certain models from Volkswagen, Schaeffler, and Bentler Hollon — will be able to connect to Lyft’s network in the future. This allows small and large fleet operators seamless access to Lyft’s platform and ridership network, Lichtmannecker said.
“Lyft’s goal is to connect automated vehicles, drivers, riders and partners to create new opportunities for everyone,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a statement. “Our ride-sharing network will continue to evolve as millions of people will have the opportunity to earn billions of dollars whether they choose to drive, put their self-driving cars into service, or both.”
Neither Lyft or Mobileye have shared when or where the first Mobileye-powered vehicles will appear on the Lyft app, but Lichtmannecker noted that the two are in talks with operating partners and OEMs today.
Mobileye is testing its Drive technology in Austin, Detroit, and Orlando, Florida. The company is also testing how its technology handles extreme weather conditions in Norway, Germany and Israel. Mobileye is currently testing a safe driver behind the wheel, and plans to remove the driver once its technology is verified to be safe.
Bring Nexar Smart Dashcam insights to AV development
Over the past few years, Nexar has used video data from its range of smart dash cameras to expand the digital dual service it sells to automotive and city OEMs.
Now, Nexar and Lyft believe that by combining forces, they will be able to provide better insights to OEMs and AV companies.
The two companies will connect over 45 petabytes of Nexar’s real-world footage spanning 200 million miles per month with Lyft’s newly collected, historical, anonymized market data to create a “comprehensive and robust dataset for autonomous vehicle technology development.”
Lyft and Nexar haven’t shared how they plan to share revenue in this partnership. The companies also did not say whether Lyft would offer Nexar Dashcams at a discount to Lyft drivers or even give drivers a cut to collect data on the company’s behalf, though a Nexar spokesperson said drivers would need to agree to participate.
The deal comes just two months after Zach Greenberger left his position as Lyft’s chief business officer to become CEO CEO of NEXAR.
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