Autonomous driving taxi, Lyft announces the launch for 2026

Lyft, in line with Uber’s strategy, adopts an approach that allows her to remain “asset light”, offering its ride-Hailing platform to various developers of autonomous driving technologies. In this way, Lyft delegates the ownership and maintenance of the Robotaxi fleet to other companies. The choice of Marubeni as a partner for the management of the fleet is motivated by his experience globally in the sector, with over 900,000 vehicles managed through various branches and joint ventures. Lyft confides that Marubeni, thanks to its fleet management skills, will contribute to minimizing the total costs owned by the vehicles and to maximize the use of the fleet. Although Marubeni does not have a specific experience in the Ride-Hailing or in the management of autonomous vehicles, he has already collaborated with Mobileye on on-demand mobility projects in Japan.

The agreement provides that Marubeni will be the owner of the vehicles equipped with Mobileye technology. The latter, owned by Intel, is a supplier of advanced driving assistance technologies for numerous leading car manufacturers, including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota. Lyft’s initiative represents an attempt to recover ground compared to its main competitor, Uber, in the race for autonomous vehicles. Uber has already tightened agreements with Waymo, Cruise (now closed), Aurora, Motional and Avride. Lyft, for his part, had previously collaborated with Waymo (concluded partnership) and Motional. After initially considering the development of its robotaxi, Lyft has sold its research and development division in the autonomous vehicles sector to a Toyota branch in 2021.