Autonomous vehicle company Argo AI LLC, based in Pittsburgh, is partnering with San Francisco-based Lyft Inc. to offer robotaxi rides in Miami this year and Austin next year.
The autonomous vehicles are being created through the company’s partnership with Ford Motor Co. Argo said that it expects to have up to 1,000 self-driving cars across multiple markets over the next five years.
“This collaboration marks the first time all the pieces of the autonomous vehicle puzzle have come together this way,” Logan Green, co-founder and CEO of Lyft, said in the July 21 announcement. “Each company brings the scale, knowledge and capability in their area of expertise that is necessary to make autonomous ride-hailing a business reality.”
Ford and Argo AI announced plans to roll into Austin back in 2019, including with a command center near the airport. At the time, the companies already had human drivers on the streets in to produce detailed 3D mapping in East Austin and downtown. Testing of the self-driving cars was delayed by the pandemic.
The Argo AI website currently lists nine job openings in Austin, including for senior software engineers and a technical director of cybersecurity.
When the Lyft partnership starts, the self-driving cars will operate with safety drivers. Lyft users can use the app to select a self-driving vehicle as one of their options.
“This collaboration is special because we’re executing on a shared vision for improving the safety, access to and affordability of transportation in our cities,” Bryan Salesky, founder and CEO of Argo AI, said in the announcement. “Beyond the link that Lyft provides to the customer, we’ll be able to work together to define where an autonomous service will benefit communities the most and ensure we’re deploying the technology safely.”
Argo AI reported that it will use anonymized service and fleet data from Lyft to determine where the company can best grow sustainable business and validate deployment, according to the announcement.
The licensing and data access agreements will provide Lyft (Nasdaq: LYFT) with 2.5% of the common equity of Argo AI.
Argo has raised about $2.6 billion in venture funding and was valued at about $7.25 billion after a round last summer, according to PitchBook Data.
Austin has a long history as a testing ground for driverless cars. Waymo, the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary that spun out from Google, actually performed the first truly autonomous car ride on public roads in Austin, back in 2015.
Waymo pulled out of Austin in 2019 but still tests driverless cars Phoenix.
Austin Business Journal's Will Anderson contributed reporting.
