Rideshare provider Lyft has partnered with an autonomous vehicle company known as Motional to launch a new “robotaxi” service in Las Vegas. The service will allow Lyft riders to request a ride in one of Motional’s all-electric Ioniq 5 vehicles from Hyundai, and by the end of 2023, those vehicles will be fully driverless.
The two companies have been testing the autonomous service for over four years now, after originally debuting it at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show. To date, over 10,000 trips have been successfully completed.
Motional is a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, and the Ioniq 5 vehicles supplied by Hyundai have been modified for commercial, autonomous use. For now, a real driver is still present to assist in the case of an emergency, which is common practice among other robotaxi-type services, but fully autonomous vehicles will be available as early as next year.
However, Lyft and Motional are taking somewhat of a different approach by going public and not requiring riders to sign non-disclosure agreements to join testing programs or waitlists. Additionally, the companies have said that rides will be free of charge until the start of 2023.
Akshay Jaising, vice president of commercialization for Motional, told the Verge that “Any Lyft rider in Las Vegas can request a Motional AV. No NDAs. No sign-ups. That’s how Motional and Lyft have operated for the past four years. We believe the best feedback is from real riders, not employees or limited participants.”
Motional has said that it has been approved to test driverless vehicles “anywhere in Nevada,” and will secure the necessary permits to roll out driverless services on a commercial scale before the official launch.
As of now, only a small number of companies have tested and researched fully driverless services on public roads in the U.S.—Alphabet-owned Waymo has been testing vehicles in Phoenix, Arizona and General Motors-back Cruise is doing the same in San Francisco, but only during nighttime hours.
