Ford has announced a new partnership with Lyft in a “significant step toward bringing self-driving vehicles to the masses”.

The partnership with Lyft hopes to accelerate plans to build a profitable and viable self-driving vehicle business.

Ford plans to utilise Lyft’s network and brand experience while using its own ability to scale self-driving vehicles, the two businesses working together to explore:

• How to create a technology platform that it can easily connect with a partner’s platform (such as Lyft’s) to effectively dispatch a self-driving vehicle
• Which cities to work with to deliver a self-driving vehicle service based on shared data and information
• The kind of infrastructure necessary to service and maintain a fleet of self-driving vehicles to maximise availability to consumers

As part of the development of a joint technology platform, Ford will deploy human-driven vehicles on Lyft’s network to test the interface and ensure compatibility with Lyft’s customer-facing platform, the Lyft app.

Developer teams from both companies are already working together, programming systems so they can communicate with one another without impacting users of the Lyft app.

The future plan is to have self-driving cars operating alongside Lyft’s current community of drivers.