The two companies announced a multi-year partnership with plans to launch autonomous vehicles in the Lyft app. Lyft and May Mobility will launch the first deployment in Atlanta next year. As per the official announcement, the upcoming service will use May Mobility’s Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles.
“Partnering with Lyft will open up new markets for us to operate in, granting greater mobility to more people, more quickly. We will continue to deliver the valuable service our riders love as we work with Lyft to make our cities better places to live,” said Edwin Olson, co-founder and CEO of May Mobility.
May Mobility says that all its vehicles will be equipped with its patented Multi-Policy Decision Making (MPDM) technology that takes advantage of AI to interpret data in real-time, continuously learning and adapting to new, complex and unpredictable driving conditions.
Lyft mobile app | Image credits: Lyft
How this all AI thing will turn out, we’ll most likely see after the first deployment is launched next year. Speaking of which, May Mobility and Lyft announced they will start planning the first deployment in the months ahead, including service area, hours of operation, fleet size and more. “We’re excited to welcome May Mobility as a new autonomous partner. Riders in Atlanta will soon find taking an autonomous ride with May Mobility as simple and intuitive as any other Lyft mode. At Lyft, we’re making it simple for partners to plug their assets into our network and take advantage of our marketplace engine,” said Jeremy Bird, EVP at Lyft.
The two companies confirmed that initial deployments will use safety operators and then transition to driver-out operations over time. Also, in order to accelerate autonomous vehicle adoption in the United States, May Mobility and Lyft will work with local governments and communities.
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