"Ford Motor and its autonomous-driving affiliate, Argo AI, have formed an alliance with Lyft in an effort to begin offering rides in self-driving cars.
Ford expects to begin operating self-driving cars in Miami through Lyft’s ride-hailing service this year. The vehicles will be outfitted with Argo’s self-driving technology but will still have someone at the steering wheel for safety.
“Going from the testing phase to a commercial service, while still using safety operators behind the wheel, is a big step,” Argo’s chief executive, Bryan Salesky, wrote in a blog post about the partnership. “But to go from there to offering driverless vehicles is an even bigger step. It requires validating that the technology is achieving a level of self-driving performance deemed safer than what we see on the streets today.”
The three companies hope to have self-driving cars operating in Austin, Texas, next year. They aim to have a few dozen cars operating in Miami and Austin and hope to have about 1,000 on the road across multiple cities within five years.
Under the partnership, Lyft will take a 2.5 percent equity stake in Argo. In return, Lyft has agreed to share data it has collected about ride-sharing operations with Ford and Argo. Ford and Volkswagen each own about 40 percent of Argo.
Waymo, the autonomous-driving company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, has been testing a limited driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix for several years. Argo has been testing about 150 autonomous vehicles in six American cities as well as in Germany."
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