A large car manufacturer is cooperating with a ride-hailing company and car technology company to commercialize automated ride-hailing services on a large scale. Ford Motor Company, Lyft and Argo AI will work hard to create a fleet and transportation network to support operations as a scalable business.
Logan Green, Lyft co-founder and CEO, said: “This collaboration marks the first time that all parts of the self-driving car puzzle have been brought together in this way.” “Each company brings scale, knowledge and expertise to its field of expertise. Capabilities, these are all necessary to make autonomous rides a commercial reality.”
As part of the cooperation, Argo AI and Ford will deploy Ford vehicles equipped with autonomous driving technology and safety drivers on the Lyft network. This is considered to be the basis for further, larger-scale operations. In the next five years, at least 1,000 autonomous vehicles will be deployed on the Lyft network.
Bryan Salesky, founder and CEO of Argo AI, said: “This collaboration is very special because we are implementing a common vision to improve the safety, accessibility and affordability of our urban transportation.” “Except for Lyft for customers Beyond the links provided, we will be able to jointly determine where autonomous services can best benefit the community and ensure that we deploy the technology safely.”
Ford Motor Company
According to the agreement, Argo AI will use anonymized services and fleet data from Lyft to analyze local safety data to overcome the challenges commonly faced by other self-driving car research companies. In addition, as part of the license and data access agreement, Lyft will acquire 2.5% of Argo AI’s common stock.
For several years, Ford and Argo AI have been collaborating to test autonomous vehicle technology in Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, Miami, Washington, D.C., Detroit, and Austin. The automaker has three autonomous vehicle research parks in the United States, located in Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan, and Silicon Valley.
The news was released one day after Woven Planet Holdings, Inc., a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, completed the acquisition of Level 5 of Lyft, Inc.’s autonomous driving division. Level 5 has offices in Silicon Valley and London. 300 employees work. The deal also includes Level 5 sensing, computing and software assets, as well as their strategic capabilities in autonomous driving systems.
There are no mass-market self-driving or self-driving cars for sale today. Although it uses the name “fully autonomous driving” in its advanced driver assistance system products, TeslaThe technology requires the driver to place his hands on the steering wheel and always concentrate on safe operation.
