Lyft & General Motors partner up, plan to roll out self-driving taxis within a year

Ready or not, here comes the new generation of taxis. General Motors Co. and Lyft Inc. are making a joint effort to challenge Silicon Valley giants in the action to transform the auto industry. Within a year, GM and Lyft will be testing an army of self-driving Chevrolet Bolt electric taxis on public roads.

The plan began a couple of months ago after GM invested $500 million in Lyft, a ride-hailing company that competes against Uber Technologies Inc. The reshaping agenda will rely on the technology being collected as part of GM’s separate $1 billion planned purchase of the San Francisco-based company of autonomous-driving technology, Cruise Automation Inc.

Alphabet Inc.’s, Google autonomous car program and Uber’s ride-sharing business, as well as Tesla Motors Inc’s electric cars, are the developments born in Silicon Valley that have past numerous global automakers. GM’s efforts to bring together recent big-dollar investments is a response to the tech industry efforts to displaces the conventional automakers.

The autonomous taxi testing program is still working out the details including the city that has not yet been decided, according to a Lyft executive. Customers will be able to choose to opt in or out of the pilot when signaling for a Lyft car from the company’s mobile application.

GM intends for Lyft’s car of choice for their cars and fleet of driverless cars to be the electric Bolt, which will launch later this year. Currently, Lyft and the Detroit auto giant rents the Chevy Equinox to drivers needing vehicles in Chicago. The program will spread to more cities and will rely on Bolts, deemed by GM executives to be an ideal fit for drivers who want to lower operating costs and needing more space, in the future instead of the Equinox.

eddie wrote:Are they just trying to make people have no jobs??

FFS! Soon we will not even have to feed ourselves - there will be some automated arm that follows us around and just shoves food straight into our mouths.

Syl wrote:Nothing can replace a good old fashioned cabbie.
Will this new fangled machine go the long way round? shout abuse if a tip isn't given? honk it's horn and wake the full street up when picking a fare up at 6am?...I doubt it.

It wont take off.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:Are they just trying to make people have no jobs??

FFS! Soon we will not even have to feed ourselves - there will be some automated arm that follows us around and just shoves food straight into our mouths.

That's exactly what corporations are trying to do. Did you know there's a computer program that can write sports articles? http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34204052

eddie wrote:Ooooh yes!

Syl wrote:

eddie wrote:Ooooh yes!

Remember the recent thread..'How will the world end' (or something like that) No one thought of machines taking over....killing the worlds population, then eventually grinding to a halt because no one is left to maintain them.

It could happen.

eddie wrote:

Syl wrote:

Remember the recent thread..'How will the world end' (or something like that) No one thought of machines taking over....killing the worlds population, then eventually grinding to a halt because no one is left to maintain them.

It could happen.

Well I daresay you and I won't be around Syl.
But just in case I might look into making myself a tin-foil suit and learning some robot talk.

eddie wrote:"To make the article sound natural it has to know the lingo. Each type of story, from finance to sport, has its own vocabulary and style. It also has to match the house rules of the news organisation - an article written for AP might be different to one for Forbes."

WTF?

Ben_Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:"To make the article sound natural it has to know the lingo. Each type of story, from finance to sport, has its own vocabulary and style. It also has to match the house rules of the news organisation - an article written for AP might be different to one for Forbes."

WTF?

Yeah, they're getting good. What they still can't do, however, is write a story about how every boy on the soccer team has dyed his hair blond for good luck

veya_victaous wrote:@wolf
actually that was considered they are all independent and operate with sensors mounted in the vehicle there is already an off road 4WD prototype.

so how much is zero to get started but if you where to remove human drivers then you can do cool stuff like get rid of traffic lights but that would require network connectivity.

@eddie
the robot is safer already