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Lyft has announced plans to launch a robotaxi service in Dallas "as soon as 2026." The ride-hailing company will use Intel’s Mobileye AV tech and Japanese conglomerate Marubeni’s fleet of cars at launch, CEO David Risher revealed in a series of posts on X.
Marubeni currently manages over 900,000 vehicles globally through various subsidiaries and joint ventures. "They’re aiming to be leaders in the emerging AV space, and we look forward to working together," Risher said.
As TechCrunch notes, Mobileye’s advanced driver-assistance technology is already installed on some vehicles from popular car makers, such as BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, Nissan, Ford, Honda, General Motors, and others.
Marubeni will also tap into Flexdrive, Lyft’s subsidiary that connects drivers with car renters. After the Dallas launch, Lyft hopes to bring “thousands more AVs” to other cities, Risher added.
The news comes shortly after rival Uber started letting Austin residents join a waitlist to be among the first to experience Waymo’s robotaxi in the Texas capital. The Uber-Waymo partnership will also expand to Atlanta later this year.
Tesla is also gearing up to launch its own robotaxi service. “We’re going to be launching unsupervised Full Self Driving [FSD] as a paid service in Austin in June,” CEO Elon Musk said in an earnings call last month.