RIDEGURU
The company is buying the AR startup Blue Vision Labs as it unveiled its first Ford test vehicle
Lyft, the transportation on demand company that is heading to a $15 billion IPO in 2019, is racing ahead with its autonomous vehicle plans. TechCrunch has learned that it is acquiring the London-based augmented reality startup Blue Vision Labs and unveiling its first test vehicle to advance its vision for self-driving cars.
The first car from Lyft’s Level 5 self-driving initiative will be the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Lyft’s use of a Ford Fusion apparently isn’t associated with the partnership the two announced last year. Other AV companies have used the Ford Fusion as a platform for integrating self-driving technologies.
The Ford Fusion (now with Lyft autonomy!)
While the integration of Lyft’s autonomous technologies and a Ford car is impressive, perhaps more meaningful is the company’s acquisition of Blue Vision Labs, a startup out of London that has developed a way of ingesting street-level imagery and is using it to build collaborative, interactive augmented reality layers — all by way of basic smartphone cameras.
Blue Vision will sit within Lyft’s Level 5 autonomous car division headed up by Luc Vincent (who joined the company last year as VP of engineering after creating and running Google Street View).
The startup and its staff of 39 (everyone is joining Lyft) will also become the anchor for a new R&D operation in London or the San Francisco-based company, focused on that autonomous driving effort. Level 5 is stepping up a gear in another way today, too: Lyft is unveiling a new vehicle that it will be using for testing.
Comments
Since Ford will be moving away from cars altogether in the near future, it will be interesting to see what their next car of choice will be. I'm pretty confident it won't be the "volvo's" like we've seen them testing in Pittsburgh. No way you can use a car that expensive at the current rates whether with or without a driver.
My guess is that once Lyft is faced with the reality of automobile ownership, rates will FINALLY increase! And hopefully everyone, including their existing driver base, will benefit.
IMO, there will be, for MANY years, a need for drivers and perhaps autonomous vehicles will be able to operate within cities and well mapped areas. Of courese, only time will tell, but that's my bet.
Ford Fusion does look like Aston Martin. Love it.
Though I am sure it doesn't drive like one.
Love the Fusion! Was my first car :)