Automaker partners with Lyft on go-to market strategy for autonomous vehicles
The future of autonomous vehicles is slowing approaching with advancements like Tesla’s autopilot and driverless trams, but what will it take for fully autonomous vehicles to break into the widespread consumer market?
Investment activity may be some indication. Specifically, automaker General Motors has invested $500 million into ride-booking startup Lyft, which is currently valued at $4.5 billion not including $1 billion raised in a recent funding round, according to The New York Times.
This type of strategy — rolling out autonomous vehicles in the context of what’s essentially the more high-tech equivalent of a taxi — isn’t unique to the Lyft/GM arrangement.
Back in February, Bloomberg reported Google, an early Uber investor, planned to launch a competing service using its fleet of autonomous vehicles that have clocked more than 1 million miles of road tests in the San Francisco and Austin, Texas, areas.
For its part, Uber is also reported to be exploring self-driving vehicles of its own with a team of in-house specialists. And perhaps most secretive of all, Apple is rumored to have a vehicle in development, but there’s very little information available.
“We strongly believe that autonomous vehicle go-to-market strategy is through a network, not through individual car ownership,” John Zimmer, president of Lyft, told The New York Times.
In published comments, GM president Dan Ammann seemed focused on the opportunities associated with ride-booking services despite the apparent threat to the traditional concept of vehicle ownership.
Ammann told Forbes, “As we think about what the future of mobility looks like, what we found was that the Lyft team had a common view of what that world would look like, the role of mobility as a service, particularly in an urban environment.”
