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Lyft will begin offering "autonomous" rides (with a test driver in the front seat) to some ride-hailing customers by the end of the year. The program is expected to launch in Boston first:
Silicon Valley's steady march toward self-driving cars took another step forward Friday as the ride-hailing company Lyft said its customers will be able to summon a driverless vehicle on some roads by the end of the year.
The autonomy program, which is expected to launch in Boston before eventually spreading to other cities, could ultimately involve hundreds of thousands of vehicles, said company officials. Depending on the precise conditions of a trip — including the route, traffic, weather and time of day — riders who opt into the trial may be automatically picked up in a self-driving car built by one of a number of manufacturers working with Lyft, rather than a human driver. "You're going to see it. You're going to see these vehicles on the street," said Taggart Matthiesen, Lyft's senior director of product.
As with other companies that have been publicly testing self-driving cars, Lyft riders who participate in the program will be accompanied by test drivers sitting in the front seats of the vehicles.
Lyft announcement. Also at TechCrunch, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
[Ed. addition: I can personally vouch for all 14 of the suggestions given in Boston Driving Tips. If you are intending to drive in Boston, don't trust your past experience — this short article should be mandatory reading.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @03:40PM (2 children)
I've been unable to confirm any plans for having vehicles available by the end of the year anywhere except on the Washington Post article. And they in turn seem to be basing that entirely on the quote: "You're going to see it. You're going to see these vehicles on the street.” That quote is given without any context and seems to be something that could be an intentional 'misinterpretation' of what was said. None of the other articles covering this mentioned, among several others I found, mention anything about plans for having this done by the end of the year. I found this timeline somewhat unlikely, and so far as I can tell this just seems to be Washington Post clickbaiting.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 23 2017, @08:43PM (1 child)
So quick to call WaPo fake news. Is Trumpu-jiichan whispering in your ear?
Lyft's plans are entirely plausible because Uber is doing the exact same thing in Pittsburgh [npr.org]. Autonomous cars with test drivers, assigned to certain app trips based on various factors. No different than what is proposed here and already underway.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @06:20AM
The reason for my suspicion is because multiple organizations are reporting on this and WaPo is the only one that is suggesting this timeline. Their evidence for such is also extremely ambiguous. As an aside, I don't think it's a secret that Washington Post's credibility has been going down the drain. These are some headline stories currently on their front page: [washingtonpost.com]
- A desperate request for water and a worker’s suspicions led to discovery of a ‘horrific tragedy’ in a truck in Texas
- How to make $100,000 a month in China, live-streaming your life
- Read Anthony Scaramucci’s old tweets. You’ll understand why he deleted them.
- Please keep this guy away from rousing charter school debate
- Why a biodefense firm is going on a spending spree
Feel free to ctrl+f to verify - I copied those headlines verbatim from their page. WaPo is quickly turning into a tabloid and so I like to do some basic verification on their stories before sharing them, or ideally find a more reliable source for the story. In this case, I think Lyft aiming for self driving tests by the end of the year (that's about 4 months) would be pretty amazing news, but I don't think it's wise to use the Washington Post as a 'first party' source anymore.