Lyft to Develop Self-Driving Car Technology in New Silicon Valley Facility
“That’s why 10 percent of our engineers are already focused on developing self-driving technology —
and we’ll continue to grow that team in the months ahead.”
Uber, Lyft’s much larger rival, has spent millions opening facilities in Pittsburgh, Toronto
and San Francisco dedicated entirely to autonomous-vehicle research, while building its own hardware and software systems to operate the vehicles.
“We want to bring the whole industry together with this,
and we think there’s a unique opportunity in time right now for Lyft to become a leader while doing it,” said Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s chief strategy officer, in a press event at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
While Uber’s self-driving plans have mostly been a solo effort, Lyft has announced what it calls its Open Platform Initiative,
a way to develop autonomous vehicle technology in conjunction with automakers and technology companies.
On Friday, Lyft, the ride-hailing company, announced
that it was developing its own self-driving technology, marking yet another company’s gamble that the future of transportation will be marked by self-driving cars.
Lyft is marking the occasion with the opening of a new self-driving-research facility in Palo Alto, Calif.,
and plans to heavily recruit new engineering and technical people for the facility after it opens in the coming weeks.
Now, technology companies are betting that the next 10 years and beyond will be spent battling for control of the self-driving automobile.
