Autonomous vehicle tech company May Mobility has predicted that it could become the first AV company to actually turn a profit.
Now, the Michigan-based startup, which was founded in 2017, has signed on to a multi-year agreement that CEO and co-founder Edwin Olson told Tech Brew makes him even more confident in May’s ability to achieve this outcome by 2027: Lyft will deploy May’s AVs on its ride-hailing platform.
“A commercialization partner like Lyft can basically sell us out—which is a great problem for us to have,” Olson said. “And that puts us on the path to be the first profitable AV company.”
The service, which represents May’s debut in the robotaxi sector, is slated to launch in Atlanta, Georgia, next year and could expand to other markets in the future.
Partnerships galore: The announcement was one of a few new autonomous vehicle partnerships Lyft unveiled on Wednesday, with it touting its platform as an opportunity for AV companies to quickly scale their technology and make money from it.
The ride-hailing company is also teaming up with autonomous driving company Mobileye. Lyft will make its platform available to all vehicles outfitted with Mobileye’s AV tech, an arrangement that aims to give “small and large fleet operators seamless access to Lyft’s platform and network of riders to optimize their vehicles,” per a news release.
Lyft also will work with Nexar on using data to “help OEMs and AV companies build better and safer autonomous technology.”
“We’re thrilled to work with Mobileye, May Mobility, and Nexar to build the autonomous future together, with more partnerships to follow,” Lyft CEO David Risher said in a statement. “Our rideshare network will continue to evolve as millions of people will have the opportunity to earn billions of dollars whether they choose to drive, put their AVs into service, or both.”
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AVs are nothing new for Lyft, which first entered the space in 2016. It has had numerous partnerships over the years, including with Motional, Waymo, and Ford.
Lyft’s announcements around autonomy come on the heels of Tesla debuting a robotaxi product that could be a competitor of Lyft and Uber.
Hop in: Lyft and May Mobility’s robotaxi service would involve passengers hailing rides on the Lyft app, with rides provided by May’s purpose-built Toyota Sienna minivans. The vehicles are equipped with May’s proprietary Multi-Policy Decision Making technology, which uses a range of sensors and AI to interpret data in real time to guide driving decisions.
Safety operators initially will be in the vehicles, with plans to move to rider-only operations in the future.
Up to this point, May—which started offering its first driverless rides in an Arizona retirement community earlier this year—has focused on delivering autonomous microtransit services via contracts with local governments and transit agencies. Olson previously said that the company’s focus was not on robotaxis.
Olson told us that May’s mission remains unchanged, but that the partnership with Lyft opens up new opportunities to the startup—and that ultimately, it’s not May’s ambition to be an end-to-end robotaxi service provider.
“Our first market was selling directly to cities, but I think it’s natural that over time we’ll look at market segments where we sell directly to consumers, as well. It’s the same ethos, different business model,” he said.
“We don’t want to provide all the components of a ride-hail solution. We want to focus on the autonomy,” he added. “And partnering with Lyft is a really natural way for them to gain experience with autonomous vehicles and for us to access Lyft’s market.”