Ride-hailing giant Lyft and self-driving car technology company Argo AI are now officially offering a public driverless cab service in Austin, Texas. This is the second city in which Lyft and Argo operate a commercial driverless cab service, following Miami, which launched the service in December.
Riders in Austin will have the option to choose a driverless commute directly from the Lyft app for the same price as a regular Lyft ride, the company said in a blog post-Thursday. The app will enable customers to unlock the vehicle’s doors, start a ride and contact customer support. It may seem odd at first, especially since there will actually be two people in the driver and passenger seats monitoring the ride for safety reasons.
The plan is likely to have reached a crescendo since top rival Cruise revealed plans to launch its own driverless ride-hailing service in Austin by the end of the year. Cruise is also looking to launch service in Phoenix, Arizona, where Waymo has built a driverless robo-taxi and delivery business as it struggles to scale revenue. Lyft and Argo have largely avoided Cruise’s home base of San Francisco, where other competitors such as Waymo and Zoox have concentrated their operations, and where Cruise launched a fully driverless commercial ride-hailing service this summer. Instead, the companies have set their sights on other U.S. cities with less competition and more favorable regulatory environments.
Last month, Motional, an AV joint venture between Lyft and Aptiv-Hyundai, also launched a fleet of all-electric Ioniq 5s for its driverless cab business in Las Vegas. In addition, Argo is actively testing in seven cities around the world, including Palo Alto, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Hamburg, Germany.
The companies have not yet disclosed when they will operate in Austin, but an Argo spokeswoman said its fleet of an unspecified number of Ford Escape hybrids will operate during daylight hours. Argo and Lyft also would not elaborate on when they expect to eliminate safety drivers from commercial operations in Miami or Austin, but Argo has been testing in both cities since May completely driverless operations.
A Lyft spokeswoman said the elimination of supervisors will depend on safety performance data, appropriate community acceptance and the regulatory environment.
