Rahul Somvanshi
Ride-hailing company Lyft is taking its next big step in transportation. The company plans to launch self-driving taxis in Dallas by 2026. These cars will drive themselves using technology from Mobileye, a company that specializes in self-driving systems.
When Lyft announced this news, both companies saw immediate benefits. Lyft’s stock price went up by 4.6%, while Mobileye’s jumped even higher at 17%. This shows that investors believe this partnership could work well.
“The rest of the value chain is where we really want to play a role, and that’s in fleet management, demand generation, and marketplace,” says Jeremy Bird, a top executive at Lyft. Put simply, Lyft will handle booking rides and managing the cars, while Mobileye provides the self-driving technology.
A Japanese company called Marubeni will actually own and take care of the cars. This setup matches Lyft’s business approach, as they won’t have to buy thousands of expensive cars themselves. Instead, they can focus on managing their ride-hailing platform and operations.
This isn’t Lyft’s first attempt at self-driving cars. They tried building their own technology before, but ended up selling that project to Toyota in 2021. They also lost money – about $135.7 million – when another self-driving company they worked with, called Argo AI, shut down.
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Lyft isn’t alone in this race. Their biggest competitor, Uber, is already working with another self-driving company called Waymo. Waymo’s self-driving taxis are already running in cities like Miami, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They’re planning to start in Austin next month.
The cars will use Mobileye’s technology, which is already used by car makers like Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford, and General Motors. While we don’t know yet which car brand Lyft will use in Dallas, they plan to expand to thousands of vehicles across many cities after the initial launch.
To keep these self-driving cars running smoothly, Lyft will use their experience from managing rental cars through their Flexdrive service. This means they already know how to handle important tasks like charging, cleaning, and fixing vehicles when needed.
Dallas represents the first step in Lyft’s autonomous vehicle program. After testing and running the service there, this could demonstrate to other cities how self-driving taxis might work as part of their transportation systems.
The key challenge now is making sure these self-driving taxis work reliably for daily use. Lyft will need to show both city officials and the public that their self-driving cars can operate safely in real-world conditions.
