Lyft will add autonomous shuttles made by Austrian producer Benteler Group to its community in late 2026, the corporate introduced Friday. The shuttles shall be deployed in partnership with U.S. cities and airports, based on Lyft, however might broaden out from there if issues go properly.
The partnership will let Lyft use city electrical shuttles made by Benteler’s mobility division below the Holon model. The shuttles is not going to have a steering wheel or pedals and can characteristic inward-facing seats for as much as 9 seated and 6 standing passengers, based on Bloomberg Information, which first reported the Benteler partnership on Friday.
The tie-up comes amid a flurry of bulletins from Lyft’s predominant rival, Uber, which has just lately added robotaxis from Waymo and WeRide in varied cities world wide. Uber can be engaged on including robotaxis from Baidu, Pony AI, Momenta, Could Mobility, Volkswagen, and Wayve, and simply final week introduced a take care of Nuro and Lucid Motors.
Regardless of years of testing with varied companions, Lyft remains to be engaged on including autonomous autos to its personal fleet of autos. The corporate plans to place AVs from Could Mobility on its community in Atlanta later this yr. It’s additionally working with autonomy supplier Mobileye, although it’s not clear who would make these autos.
Mobileye’s tech is what powers the Holon shuttles, although Lyft advised Bloomberg that these aren’t the identical offers.