Lyft is about to enter the increasingly competitive world of robotaxis.
The ride-hailing company said Friday that users will be able to take rides in self-driving cars starting this summer, with autonomous vehicles first hitting the streets of Atlanta.
The rollout will be done in partnership with May Mobility, an autonomous vehicle company. Its self-driving technology will be installed in Toyota Sienna minivans that users will have the chance to take rides in.
A Lyft spokesperson added that the company’s next stop will be Dallas, where the company is also aiming to deploy self-driving vehicles in partnership with the companies Mobileye and Marubeni as soon as next year, with “thousands of vehicles and more cities to follow.”
In a statement released Thursday, Jeremy Bird, Lyft’s executive vice president of driver experience, said the new venture could create more opportunities for Lyft drivers to earn money off the clock by purchasing their own AVs.
“Drivers today come to the Lyft platform for many reasons, but one of the main draws is the flexibility it offers,” Bird wrote. “The only limit is their own schedule, since they need to be available to drive. This is a very real hurdle today, but over time, personally-owned AVs will remove even this limit — allowing people to earn while they are working another job, or taking care of their families, or sleeping.”
Robotaxis using self-driving technology can now be found on the streets of at least four U.S. cities and even more abroad, with many major tech companies competing for what analysts believe could be a market that is worth billions if not trillions. Alphabet’s Waymo, Tesla and Amazon are all pushing forward with self-driving car technology, much of which is already finding its way into ride-sharing cars.
In October 2023, Uber announced it would be partnering with Waymo to begin offering self-driving car rides in Phoenix. Since then, the company has expanded to offer AVs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas, with plans to expand to Miami in 2026.
Despite the growing presence of AVs, some ride-share customers are wary of the new technology. According to a 2023 survey by the American Automobile Association, 68% of drivers are afraid of autonomous vehicles. Incidents involving Waymo vehicles have included a car stuck spinning in circles and a crash into a stationary pole. Even so, Waymo provides around 200,000 self-driving taxi rides every week, according to Forbes.
“I’m not a neutral observer. I’m rooting for AVs, not just as a consumer, but because I think they’ll be great for Lyft, as well as the riders and drivers on our platform,” Lyft CEO David Risher wrote in a February statement. “AVs grow the overall rideshare market by providing a safe, engaging, novel mode of transportation, making it even easier for people to get out and about.”
