Lyft plans to build a hybrid network of autonomous vehicles and drivers, says co-founder

Lyft’Its fleet will remain largely driven by drivers even as the company continues to develop its autonomous driving capabilities, co-founder and president John Zimmer told CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Tuesday. .

“What we’re seeing happening is there’s going to be a hybrid network, which means that on day one, like what happened with phones, you don’t have 3G, go 4G, go 5G on separate networks. You still need to be able to have a 3G call when 4G isn’t available,” Zimmer said in an above interview.Crazy money. “

“The same will be true for self-driving cars. … It will do five percent of the trips. 95% of the time you’ll be relying on car-sharing drivers. So that’s all that’s going to be.” happens in the Lyft network, and we’ll scale with our self-governing partners,” he added.

Lyft Autonomous AV partners include Ford Motor and Argo AI, Motional and Waymo. Lyft announced in 2021 that it will launch its unmanned robotaxi service in Las Vegas next year through a partnership with Motional.

Zimmer also told Cramer that the ride-sharing platform has seen a “40 percent improvement in active drivers year-over-year” and productivity has been higher, with Lyft enabling each driver to increase 20% more than in the first quarter of 2019.

Gasoline prices rise leading to lack of car sharing drivers the beginning of the year, and The Covid pandemic has held back Lyft drivers out of the previous path.

Disclosure: Cramer’s Charity Trust owns shares of Ford.

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