Lyft partners with May Mobility to bring autonomous vehicles to the app
Lyft is hoping to catch up to Uber’s string of autonomous vehicle partnerships.
Lyft announced Wednesday three separate partnerships — with startup May Mobility, automated driving company Mobileye and smart dashcam firm Nexar — all aimed at establishing a foothold in the emerging autonomous vehicle market.
In the announcement, the ride-hailing company said it signed a deal with May Mobility to launch autonomous vehicles on the Lyft app starting in Atlanta in 2025. Lyft also announced a partnership with Intel-owned Mobileye that will allow certain AV tech-equipped vehicles to tap into the ride-hailing app as well as a data-sharing agreement with Nexar that’s designed to give OEMs and operators better insights to train autonomous driving systems.
This isn’t Lyft’s first time delving into autonomous vehicles. The company previously provided a robotaxi service — always with a human safety driver behind the wheel — in Las Vegas via a partnership with Motional. It had a similar agreement in Austin and Miami with Argo AI. However, Motional paused that partnership in May after slashing its workforce, and Argo AI shut down in 2022. Lyft had a stake in Argo, and took a $135.7 million hit when the company folded.
Uber, meanwhile, has been busy snatching up deals with top AV companies across the robotaxi, delivery, and freight industry, including Waymo, Cruise, Avride, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and more.
May Mobility + Lyft, starting in 2025
May Mobility has made a name for itself rolling out autonomous micro-transit services mainly in geofenced areas around the U.S. The startup’s shuttles operate within campuses and to designated stops along fixed routes in cities like Ann Arbor, Michigan, Arlington, Virginia, Peachtree Corners in Atlanta, Miami, and Sun City, Arizona. In May 2023, May Mobility launched an on-demand service in Grand Rapids, Michigan in partnership with Via.
“Partnering with Lyft will open up new markets for us to operate in, granting greater mobility to more people, more quickly,” said Edwin Olson, co-founder and CEO of May Mobility, in a statement.
The multi-year Lyft partnership is May’s first foray into ride-hail. May Mobility and Lyft didn’t say when the AVs will be deployed, how many of May’s Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS vehicles will hit the streets, or whether May will provide pooled rides and shuttles, or individual on-demand transit.
In a statement, May did note that initial deployments will use safety drivers in the front seat, with plans to transition to fully driverless over time.