Unlike Uber, Lyft's still doesn't have autonomous cars in active duty, but a blog post by Lyft co-founder and president John Zimmer articulates the company's vision of the future in which most of its rides will be handled driverless by the year 2021.
Lyft's Vision Of Self-Driving Cars Dominance
On Sunday, Sept. 18, Lyft's co-founder John Zimmer published a blog post on Medium, outlining his vision of rideshare company's future. In the lengthy and detailed post, Zimmer explains how his company will position itself in the ridesharing business over the next ten years.
According to TechCrunch, in Zimmer's vision, the personal car ownership will be a thing of the past by the year 2025, as more and more people will prefer to use shared vehicle networks, especially in U.S. urban areas. Meanwhile, by 2021, the autonomous vehicles will dominate Lyft's fleet of cars and most of the rides will be handled driverless.
Zimmer explained in an interview for the same publication that he decided to write a long post because he has been working on this project for almost 10 years, since the moment he started the company Zimride in 2007. He added that, beside marketing hype happening in the self-driving industry including press releases, announcements and test drives on the road, this emerging technology is a real opportunity "to actually impact how our cities work."
Gizmodo reports that in order to handle the majority of Lyft rides by autonomous cars within the next five years, the company will have to first start testing a fleet of self-driving cars able to complete rides under 25 miles per hour on flat, dry roads. After the first stage, the maximum speed would gradually increase until driverless cars can meet all the standards of being piloted by a human. A fully driverless fleet of rideshare cars is expected by Zimmer to be in action within 10 years.
