Lyft setting up unit to develop autonomous vehicle technology

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According to the Associated Press, San Francisco-based ride-hailing service Lyft is setting up its own unit, called “Level Five,” to develop autonomous vehicle technology. The unit is named after the industry term for fully autonomous vehicles.

Lyft says that it will open its network, and invite automakers and tech companies to use the network to transport passengers in their self-driving vehicles and gather data along the way.

Initially, the network will be open to Lyft’s current partners, which includes companies such as Google's Waymo autonomous vehicle operation and General Motors.

“We believe this is inevitable where the world is going,” says Lyft’s chief strategy officer Raj Kapoor. “We need to be playing this role.”

Lyft, which is looking to “make a standardized system for use on its network” instead of producing its own vehicles, says that by the end of 2018, it expects to have several hundred employees working on the vehicles in Palo Alto, California.

Humans will still be in the driver's seat while the self-driving vehicles are in operation. Detailed maps won’t be available in many places to guide the vehicles, which means that humans will still need to be around during drives.

Right now, it is unclear how Lyft will make money off the system, but one idea is that it would “take a cut of passenger fares from everyone who uses its network or shares its system.”

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