Ride-hailing firm Lyft has announced its first office in Munich, Germany. The company said that the hub’s main focus will be self-driving vehicles, with a “talented group of new colleagues” working on simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) for level 5 autonomous cars — or vehicles with full driverless autonomy.
Lyft said in a blog post, “This team will build the layer of software that helps our self-driving cars know precisely where they are and what’s around them.”
Lyft is opening the office at a time when Uber, which operates in several European cities including Munich, is facing a series of civil lawsuits and legal battles. It is not clear why Lyft chose Munich, but Munich offers close proximity to a major automotive company that is known to be investing heavily in self-driving cars.
The company hasn’t stated how many employees it intends to hire in the new office.
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Jump into a conversationMost people expected Silicon Valley to have brought robo-cars by now, forcing (‘Foxconn’) traditional automakers into a subcontractor role. Instead, its ride-hailing companies started using SUVs and MPVs they got from automakers.
Not the sort of vehicles to use if you want to lower costs and deploy driverless. Uber and Lyft are still hemorrhaging money like there’s no tomorrow. Might there be something wrong with their premise to begin with? I think so: vehicle footprint.