Self-driving ‘robotaxis’ will roll into Miami-Dade
Miami-Dade has moved closer to a future filled with driverless vehicles.
Ford, Lyft and the autonomous-driving-technology group Argo AI announced Wednesday they would begin deploying self-driving ride-hail cars in MiamiDade, as well as Austin, Texas, this winter.
Initially, passengers who order self-driving Lyfts will not be alone in the vehicle: A safety driver ready to take over the wheel, as well as a technology monitor, will be in the front seats. Choosing a so-called “robotaxi” comes at no extra charge and there are no preset routes.
Fewer than 100 vehicles will be available at first, and the exact areas where the Lyfts will be made available have yet to be selected.
The announcement is a significant step toward a long-promised future in which ride-hail vehicles
pick up passengers on their own. And it once again puts Miami-Dade at the forefront, three years after Ford first announced it had selected the Magic City as a primary test bed for its self-driving-vehicle technology. Ford and Argo AI officials had previously said they chose MiamiDade not only because it allowed them to test their technology year-round, but because driving conditions here are notoriously unpredictable.
“As us locals like to say: If you can drive in Miami, you can drive anywhere,” Alex Buznego, Miamibased autonomous vehicle market manager for Ford Motor Company, wrote in
March.
By exposing Argo AI’s self-driving system to the unique and challenging situations in Miami, he said, Ford gets closer to scaling its technology to other cities.
“Every day, Argo AI encounters a variety of scenarios that we don’t experience in other cities. Miami is known for heavy traffic, fast-driving cars and many pedestrians and cyclists,” Buznego said.
The deployment represents the first commercial operation in a major city in the race to roll out autonomous fleets. The only other ride-hailing operation currently operating continuously is in Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix, where Google parent company Alphabet has set up a self-driving minivan service.
“This collaboration marks the first time all the pieces of the autonomous vehicle puzzle have come together this way,“Lyft co-founder and CEO Logan Green said in a statement on Wednesday. “Each company brings the scale, knowledge and capability in their area of expertise that is necessary to make autonomous ridehailing a business reality.”
Over the next five years, the trio hope to use what they’ve learned in MiamiDade to deploy at least 1,000 autonomous vehicles in multiple markets.
“These three companies share a belief that autonomous vehicles will be a key enabler for a cleaner, safer and more efficient urban mobility landscape,” said Scott Griffith, CEO of Ford Autonomous Vehicles & Mobility Businesses, in a statement.