ECCV 2018 Daily - Tuesday

Daily Tuesday 11 Lyft are the fastest-growing ride sharing company in the United States. They were the first company to launch a peer-to-peer ride sharing service, as well as a shared ride service – Lyft Line – which their competitors across the globe are now also leveraging. They have over 35% market share in the United States. They are also in Canada and are looking to explore additional growth when the time is right. Ezra Hayman is the head of marketing for the self-driving division at Lyft, who are part of the ECCV 2018 Expo . He tells us why they are doing so well: “We’ve always been focused on people and doing business the right way and treating people better. That’s really translated into how we treat our drivers. Always allowing tipping on the platform and making sure that the platform is really healthy. Trust and safety are always the first thing that we prioritise.” Lyft are at ECCV for their Level 5 self- driving division . They have a full division focused solely on building self-driving technology end to end, so hardware, software, and all of the mapping and data collection that goes along with that. They have a large office in Palo Alto and another office here in Munich , which is another reason why they are here this week. Ezra adds: “ We’re really moving fast and recognising that this is a really important technology that we need to get out into the world, but that we have to do it the right way. We’re an on-demand transportation company, so we’re really focused on Level 4 autonomy, which means a vehicle that can be self-driving in fixed conditions. What that means is from there we can start to really grow the platform by allowing on-demand rides using self- driving technology .” To begin with, Lyft are launching partner vehicles. They have partnered with Aptiv and have 30 cars live in Las Vegas right now where anyone can get rides on the Lyft platform in a self- driving vehicle. Ezra says you can call a vehicle just like a normal Lyft ride and it will come and pick you up. Currently, they have the safety driver and safety operator both in the vehicle, but over time, the goal is to make them more and more autonomous. As well as this, Lyft have a partnership with Waymo and are going to be putting Waymo vehicles on the platform. Level 5 is also developing the end-to-end kit to upfit another OEM’s vehicle. 10 Expo: Lyft Hayman (left) and Rapp