Lyft is scrambling to compete as Uber racks up autonomous vehicle (AV) partners. On Monday, Lyft said it partnered with Japanese conglomerate Marubeni to bring robotaxis to Dallas roads as soon as next year before expanding to “thousands of vehicles” in other cities.
It’s the first fruit from Lyft’s Mobileye partnership, announced in November. TechCrunch notes that the Intel-owned Mobileye’s tech is already available in models from (among others) Audi, Ford, GM, Nissan and Volkswagen. Lyft hasn’t yet said which automaker(s) it’s partnering with for the Dallas rollout. But Lyft executive vice president of driver experience Jeremy Bird told TechCrunch that it’s in talks with “every major autonomous carmaker.”
Marubeni, which owns subsidiaries in industries ranging from cereal to fossil fuels (fortunately, not in the same product), owns and manages fleets with over 900,000 vehicles across the globe. The company’s Mobileye-equipped robotaxis will be available for folks in Dallas to hail through the Lyft app after the program launches.
Although the Dallas launch will serve as Lyft’s pilot program for Mobileye AVs, it may not end up being the company’s next robotaxi rollout. Last year, it also partnered with AV company May Mobility and aims to bring robotaxis with its tech to Atlanta sometime in 2025.
The pressure is on Lyft to keep up, as Uber has inked deals with a long list of companies in the AV space, including Avride, Aurora Innovation, Nuro, Waabi and Wayve. Uber and Alphabet’s Waymo also plan to launch AV fleets in Austin and Atlanta early this year. (The waitlist is already open.) Tesla has also said it plans to introduce its first autonomous vehicle service in Austin this June.
