Lyft Inc. today announced three new partnerships designed to make autonomous taxis available to users of its ride-hailing app.

The first deal is with Intel Corp.’s Mobileye unit. Under the agreement, Lyft will enable its users to take trips in Mobileye-powered autonomous vehicles. The company is also partnering with May Mobility Inc. and Nexar Ltd., two venture-backed startups that offer autonomous shuttle services and dash cams, respectively.

The partnership with Mobileye focuses on the Intel unit’s Drive autonomous driving system. The module enables vehicles to operate without human input in most situations. It’s powered by four of Mobileye’s top-end EyeQ 6 High systems-on-chip, which each include more than a half-dozen compute modules, including an eight-core central processing unit.

Drive combines the chips with cameras, lidar sensors and radar units. The system runs two autonomous driving applications: One uses cameras to navigate, while the other relies on the lidar and radar modules. If one of the application’s sensors malfunction, the other can take over without impacting the host vehicle’s ability to operate.

The partnership announced today will see Mobileye equip Drive-powered vehicles with a Lyft integration. The feature will allow drivers to turn their cars into autonomous taxis and make them available through the ride-hailing app. 

“Our rideshare network will continue to evolve as millions of people will have the opportunity to earn billions of dollars whether they choose to drive, put their AVs into service, or both,” said Lyft Chief Executive Officer David Risher.

The second partnership that the company announced today is with May Mobility, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by about $300 million in funding. It provides a shuttle service powered by self-driving Toyota Sienna minivans. The vehicles operate autonomously along short, fixed routes using an AI system called Multi-Policy Decision Making.

Through their partnership, Lyft and May Mobility will make self-driving minivans available to the former company’s users in Atlanta. The vehicles are expected to start picking up passengers next year.  Lyft plans to bring May Mobility’s minivans to additional markets over time.

Nexar, the third company with which Lyft is partnering on its autonomous vehicle push, is a major supplier of dash cams. The hardware maker shares footage from its customers’ dash cams with government agencies, car makers and other organizations that use the data for tasks such as identifying driving hazards. Nexar says that it has collected more than 45 petabytes’ worth of road information to date. 

Lyft plans to combine Nexar’s footage with anonymized vehicle information from its ride-hailing app. According to the companies, the goal is to create a dataset that autonomous vehicle developers can use to enhance their technology.

Image: Lyft