Lyft, in July 2017, announced that it was joining the autonomous vehicle race and opened a dedicated research facility in Palo Alto. Since then, the company has been hard at work to develop the technology, and now it’s ready to put it up for testing.
The company is now planning to test its self-driving cars at Gomentum Station in California. The former military base, which use to be the Concord Naval Weapons Station, is a 5,000-acre autonomous vehicle proving ground. Lyft testing their vehicles at the proving grounds will allow the company to get closer to bringing its vehicles on the public roads, something that the company has to do before it can officially release a self-driving fleet for public use.
At this point, it’s unclear when the trials will begin, but the vehicles the company is putting to the test at the Gomentum Station will come from its Level 5 Engineering Center in Palo Alto. Lyft has teamed up with various automakers and tech giants to develop its autonomous game plan. Level 5’s engineers, hardware and software developers are working with several companies like General Motors, Land Rover, Waymo and Jaguar under Lyft’s Open Platform Initiative in order to help develop the company’s self-driving technology.
Apart from knowing that the company is starting testing at the Gomentum Station, we don’t have much details. We’ll know additional details once the company reveals more information about the project in the future. “By partnering with GoMentum Station,” said Lyft’s VP of Engineering Luc Vincent, “we’re able to test our self-driving systems in a secure facility and advance our technology in an efficient way.”
