Unlike Uber, Lyft is focusing more on partnerships with other companies than in-house development of self-driving cars. On the day of its first quarter earnings, for example, it announced that Waymo self-driving minivans would be available in the Lyft app in certain Arizona locations.
"We have two pieces of our autonomous strategy," Co-founder John Zimmer told analysts and investors on the earnings call. "One is first party, which is our Level 5 group. We believe we're in a great position, given our platform, our access to data, and an amazing talented team to build our own self-driving components."
To date, the company has provided over 35,000 autonomous rides in Las Vegas as part of its partnership with Aptiv.
"Something that's important to note is that those investments that we're making today and our first-party system can benefit the existing business even before there's autonomous vehicles through mapping a better ETAs and therefore a higher utilization and efficiency in the marketplace," he continued.
"But we are agnostic to where this technology comes from. And so therefore we have a third-party part of our strategy, and Waymo is a phenomenal partner with leading AV technology. And so it's part of that two-pronged strategy, and it doesn't affect the other relationships that we have. And you can expect more developments on both sides of that strategy."
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