Lyft off: Jeremy Bird details the ride-hailing network’s role in the robotaxi future

Shift: A podcast about mobility

Automotive News

Business

4.8 • 31 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jeremy Bird, executive vice president of driver experience at Lyft, explains how the company is working with Mobileye, May Mobility and others to launch robotaxis in the near term. He explores the complementary and competitive aspects of relationships between ride-hailing networks and self-driving tech providers, and the pricing differences between human-driven and automated rides. Further, Bird addresses how Lyft’s human drivers feel about their jobs in an environment when self-driving...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to Shift, a podcast about mobility. I'm Pete Bigelow, your host and reporter at the Automotive News.
0:07.5	My guest on the podcast today is Jeremy Byrd, Executive Vice President of Driver Experience at Lyft.
0:13.6	Jeremy oversees both Lyfts drivers and works on partnering with driverless vehicle companies.
0:20.8	So we have a good discussion ahead there. Many people's first autonomous experience. and works on partnering with driverless vehicle companies.
0:20.8	So we have a good discussion ahead there.
0:23.3	Many people's first autonomous experience
0:25.3	will be in a rideshare vehicle.
0:26.9	And so we see the safety operator in some ways
0:28.6	is like can be really beneficial early on
0:30.8	to educate about what's happening
0:32.2	to really kind of get folks feeling comfortable
0:33.9	with the technology.
0:35.5	First this week, we have a look at headlines from the
0:38.2	mobility realm. And for that, I am joined by my automotive news colleague, Lonnie Ilif. Lonnie,
0:43.9	how are you today? I'm doing great. Great to be here. Excellent. Great to have you. Let's start
0:49.1	with the obvious, Lonnie. Tesla has finally officially launched its Robotaxy Service after a decade of development,
0:58.1	I think.
0:59.2	What do we know?
1:00.9	Yeah, it's really fascinating.
1:02.9	It's something that people in the community have been like super excited to watch in terms of like there were a group of influencers who were invited by Tesla.
1:14.2	They're also investors and stockholders and a lot of them. And they went out to Austin to do.
1:21.2	It's kind of like a pilot program, a beta program, because it is invite only. It has a symbolic charge of $4.20 a flat fee per ride,
	...

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