Name: Lyft’s Timeline for a Fully Autonomous Fleet Is Unrealistic
Uploaded: 2016-09-19
Duration: 2 min 25 s
Description: It’s aiming for 2022

[ SOUND ] Lyft has announced plans to have a fleet of driverless cars on the roads by 2022. Andrew, can they do it? Absolutely. I'm all in on this. I think it's really, really aggressive but really great. I mean Lyft outlined kind of a three parts to this vision. The first phase Is what we're enjoying today, which is kind of human- powered ride sharing. The second one is a mix of humans and limited self- driving car technology. And then the third is that full- blown autonomy. And I gonna tell you, Aaron, the future is now. [ LAUGH ] It's time to let go. The steering wheel and give up our God giving right to drive in America. Right, this is over exciting and I love the ambition around it, but I think it is a little bit too ambitious. I don't think they can do it, but in this in timeframe. Think about all the things that have to come together in order for this to actually become a reality And I'm talking about driverless cars, nobody in the driver's seat, no steering wheel, no brakes. I mean, we have to have ubiquitous connectivity so these cars can go everywhere. We have to have buy in from all the states, and the national regulators, kind of all working together And all the ancillary players including parking garages and car dealerships, they all have to buy into this too. That is a lot of pieces that have to all come together. I don't think 2022 is a realistic goal. But this is a tech race and it's already upon us. The competition is already heating up. I mean, come on. Lyft is outlining this vision shortly after Uber gave its first self driving car demonstration. Ford did the same around the same month. I mean, you know, this is the time. But the difference is with Lyft, is that it has a special in its corner that the others don't. And that's GM. General Motors, the, you know, country's largest auto maker. It's got a lot of resources it can tap. That's true, but the thing is you're talking about single demos that are taking on maybe a fixed route in one city and these are creating a lot of hype. It's one thing to get a prototype out there on the road and show a bunch of journalists. Sure that's gonna get people excited but that's very different than having tens of thousands of these safe, you know, tested and out on the road. And you know the car companies that know how to do things at scale, they don't move quite as fast as the startups do. But it's not gonna happen without them. It's not like somebody's gonna invent an alternate car company or you know It's not an Elon Musk Tesla situation. These are the big guys. They have the resources and quite honestly the cars to actually see this through. Will it take some time? Absolutely. Is it gonna happen faster in cities than rural areas? Sure. But everyone is in alignment on this except for maybe drivers. That is a fair point. For one show that always drives itself, come to Fortune. com for more Tech Debate.