You can order a self-driving car on Lyft again.
The company paused its autonomous taxi program, which only operates in Las Vegas, in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. Starting Thursday, the fleet will be picking up passengers again. Before the shutdown, Lyft’s cars had completed more than 100,000 autonomous trips.
The sensor- and camera-loaded BMWs have a new logo and branding. That’s because Lyft’s autonomous driving partner Aptiv rebranded over the summer after it combined forces with Hyundai. It’s now known as Motional.
Everything else is pretty much the same as it’s been since 2018 when the program started, but now there are COVID-19 safety measures in effect. The Lyft-Motional cars all have a safety driver, so there’s now a partition between the front and back seats, everyone has to wear a mask at all times, and the cars will be cleaned between rides, after driver shifts, and at the end of each day.
New 4th-gen @Ford autonomous test vehicle from Argo AI is coming to the streets of Austin, Detroit, Miami, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Instead of a Fusion hybrid this time it’s an Escape hybrid: https://t.co/BkAvTIDPYO
— Sasha Lekach (@sashajol) October 20, 2020
Ford’s Argo AI program, which does not offer rides to the public, also restarted testing this week.