Lyft summarised its 2018 autonomous vehicle pilot project in a statement it gave the California Department of Motor Vehicles a year prior. The statistics from 2019 tells a clear story.
What Do the Data Indicate?
According to information released this week by the CA DMV, Lyft tested 19 autonomous vehicles on Californian city streets in 2019.
These 19 cars, which were in operation from December 2018 to November 2019, collectively covered about 43,000 miles while operating autonomously.
The declaration is the most recent indication that Lyft is working to advance its Level 5 autonomous vehicle plan.
The California DMV, which oversees the testing of autonomous vehicles on public roads in the state, requires businesses to submit a yearly report that includes details like the total number of AV miles travelled and the number of vehicles.
It also requires businesses to report “disengagements,” which refers to each time a self-driving car leaves autonomous mode due to a technology failure or a human safety operator taking manual control for security reasons.
Plan Level 5 for Lyft
The Level 5 strategy for Lyft, which refers to the SAE automated driving level where the vehicle controls all driving in all circumstances, was launched in July 2017. Currently, Level 5 employs over 400 employees in the United States, Munich, and London.
A pilot programme in Palo Alto that provided rides to Lyft employees there marked the beginning of a trial on city roads in California in November 2018. On-demand rides were provided throughout the trial along predetermined routes, such as those between the Lyft office and Caltrain.
Since then, the organisation has expanded the pilot’s geographic and temporal scope. In comparison to six months earlier, Lyft was moving four times as many autonomous miles every quarter by the end of 2019.
On a closed-course track in East Palo Alto that it started in November 2019, Lyft is conducting additional testing. The business claimed it used this facility, which can be altered to include crossings, traffic lights, and merges, to test software before deploying its vehicles on city streets.
