Lyft has announced plans to develop its own self-driving car capabilities so it can begin offering autonomous rides by the end of the year in some locations.
The ride sharing company has decided to start a self-driving division with a facility in Palo Alto, California, rather than continuing to rely on partnerships to gain the technology in what company leadership is calling the Open Platform Initiative, CNBC reported.
“Lyft is uniquely positioned to build technology in collaboration with partners in a way that will make it possible to roll out self-driving cars at scale in the fastest, safest, most efficient way,” Luc Vincent, Lyft’s vice president of engineering, said, CNBC reported.
Lyft said it doesn’t expect self-driving cars to replace its drivers, but envisioned more a “hybrid” network to give consumers more choices, CNBC reported.
“When a passenger requests a ride that a self-driving car can complete, we may send one to complete the trip. If that person needs to go somewhere self-driving cars are unable to navigate, or their needs call for a different level of service, they will have a driver,” Vincent said in a blog post on Medium.
“We aren’t thinking of our self-driving division as a side project. It’s core to our business,” Vincent added.
The Open Platform Initiative is expected to bring together industry leaders to collaborate on the technology, rather than developing it in a proprietary way like Apple did with iPhones.
The self-driving program is expected to launch in Boston and spread to other cities, eventually involving hundreds of thousands of vehicles, Vince said in a comment on his blog post.
Twitter users continued to be skeptical of the technology.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.