Ride-Hail’s giant Lyft is set to bring Mobileye-powered, fully autonomous Robotaxis to Dallas’s “quickly in 2026” app, with more markets continuing, TechCrunch will monopoly I’m learning about it.
The news comes one day before Lyft reports its fourth quarter financial results, coinciding with Waymo’s preparations to launch a commercial Robotaxi service with Uber in Oustin and subsequently Atlanta. Tesla also shares plans to launch an autonomous riding business in Austin in June.
Marubeni, a Japanese conglomerate with experience in managing the fleet, owns and funds the MobileYe equipped vehicle that appears on Lyft’s riding app. Lyft has yet to reveal which car manufacturers are partnering for launches, but Mobileye’s Advanced Driver Assistance Technology has already been integrated into vehicles such as Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford and General Motors. Masu.
Lyft also did not share the number of vehicles to be launched in Dallas, but Jeremy Bird, executive vice president of driver experience at Lyft, will scale to thousands of vehicles from multiple cities after their Texas debut. He told TechCrunch that it was a plan.
Marubeni Partnership is a non-parallel of Lyft. Japanese companies own subsidiaries in almost every industry, from food and real estate to agriculture and energy, but they don’t have a major presence in rides or autonomous vehicles.
That said, over the past few years, Malbeni has begun to dabble. In 2021, the company partnered with Mobileye and Transit Planning App Moovit to launch an on-demand mobility service in Japan. TechCrunch reached out to find out if the collaboration is still active.
Mobile served as an intermediary between Lyft and Marubeni, Bird said. For Lyft’s Asset-Light Business Model, finding a partner who promises to own a fleet is important.
“Mobileye has technology and connections with OEMs. We have a platform, so it’s a work where fleet ownership is a big missing piece,” Bird told TechCrunch. “And when you have someone who has experience with it [fleet management] And resources and willingness to become a first me bar will change the game for us. ”
Marubeni leverages Lyft’s FlexDrive service to help manage your fleet and keep your asset usage high. FlexDrive connects drivers that do not own the vehicle with the renter. Bird said his experience in managing the fleet, including real estate for charging, cleaning, maintaining and operating vehicles, would go a long way in supporting autonomous vehicles in the future.
Byrd pointed out that Lyft will be involved in the platform in consultation with all major autonomous automakers. The company is likely hoping to kick these conversations into gear as Arch rival Uber is taking away from partnerships with other AV companies. Apart from Waymo, Uber has announced transactions with Wayve, Avride, Serving Robotics, Nuro, Aurora Innovation, Waabi and others.
Apart from Mobileye deals, Lyft has simply announced plans to launch AVS with May Mobility in Atlanta this year.
However, Lyft’s slow roll to provide an autonomous passenger compartment is not to try. The company is suffering from bad luck in the AV arena.
The company previously partnered with Startups Motional and Argo AI to launch the Robotaxi service in Las Vegas. At first, there was a human safety driver behind the wheel, but the plan was not driving completely. Motional then suspended its partnership after a significant reduction in its workforce in May, and in 2022 Argo AI was shut down. Lyft acquired a share in Argo and earned a $135.7 million hit when the company folded.
Before that, Lyft was trying to develop self-driving vehicle technology in-house, just like Uber. But both sold AV units – from Uber to Aurora in December 2020, and from Lyft to Toyota’s Weaving Planet in April 2021.
Bird acknowledged that Uber’s AV partnership would “create urgency” to Lyft, but also said it indicates that Robotaxis’ deployments will not be concentrated on one company.
He said Lyft’s goal is to build a solid partnership between companies developing AV technology and companies that want to own a fleet of self-driving cars that match the asset light business model. I did.
“The rest of the value chain is where we really want to play a role, and it’s in fleet management, demand generation, markets,” Byrd said.
Fix: Previous versions of this article listed the previous titles of Jeremy Bird in Lyft.
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