All through 2019, ride hailing company Lyft has increased it testing program saying that it now drives an additional four miles on a quarterly basis compared to six months ago.
The company also has about 400 employees worldwide dedicated to the development of it autonomous vehicles.
They also plan on going into 2020 with a new autonomous vehicle, the Chrysler Pecifica hybrid minivan, which coincidentally is also what waymo uses for it own self-driving car.
The reason why the Pacifica is best for self-driving cars is that it is a passenger car, with lots of space and has this sliding door that makes access very easy.
Lyft said they chose the Chrysler Pacifica because of it “size and functionality.” We could recall how Lyft and the Pacifica met during their partnership with waymo in may.
The partnership allows waymo rides to be offered on the Lyft ride-hailing network, in exchange Lyft gets lots of data about it riders self-driving experience.
Right now Lyft uses the Ford fusion to perform it tests operations, and they said they have plans of establishing a second testing facility to add to it level 5 engineering center.
The new testing facility is located in Palo Alto, close to the old one. Included in the new facility is gonna be intersections, roadway margins, traffic lights, pedestrian pathways and other features you would find on a public road.
Currently Lyft makes use of GoMomentum Station in concord, California to test it autonomous vehicles and this new facility is said to compensate and not replace that.
