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If you are one of those passengers who love to chat with their Lyft (LYFT+0.72%) drivers, you might find yourself feeling a tad lonely on a future Lyft ride. The ride-hailing company announced today that autonomous vehicles will soon join its fleet.
Lyft will be launching AVs in Atlanta first this year with May Mobility. The Atlanta launch should be coming this summer. In 2026, Lyft’s AVs, powered by Mobileye’s (INTC+0.40%) AV tech and financed by Japan’s Marubeni Corporation (MARUY-1.11%), will launch in Dallas, with plans to scale to thousands of vehicles and more cities to follow.
In a blog post, Lyft driver experience boss Jeremy Bird sketched out a future where AVs are prevalent but not dominant. Bird sought to reassure Lyft drivers that they won’t be out of work any time soon for a variety of reasons.
“There are still many rides that AVs just aren’t equipped to handle,” Bird wrote, citing certain kinds of weather, lighting conditions, and terrain.
He also said that there aren’t enough AVs available now to make much of a dent.
“Especially in moments of high demand like during morning commutes or after a concert, the rideshare marketplace simply needs human drivers, and lots of them,” Bird said.
Still, Bird suggested that AVs will become affordable enough that legions of people might own them and hire them out as Lyft vehicles. This prediction echoes one Tesla (TSLA+1.97%) CEO Elon Musk has repeated for years, but it’s yet to come true.
“For motivated drivers,” Bird claimed, “this will present entirely new opportunities for entrepreneurship. With lower barriers to entry and without time constraints, today’s drivers may choose to own not just one AV but entire small fleets,” Bird said, drawing parallels to what Airbnb (ABNB-0.29%) has done to the hospitality and housing sectors.
Lyft intends to follow Uber (UBER+0.46%) in rolling out AVs as part of its app. Earlier this month, Uber rolled out AV service through a deal with its former rival Waymo (GOOGL+0.03%). These launches are just part of the next big robotaxi push, which will begin in Texas as soon as this summer.
—Harri Weber contributed to this article.