While the ride-hailer is working toward a day where autonomous vehicles are the norm, its director of product, Taggart Matthiesen, has told Recode that there will always be room for human drivers in Lyft’s future–they just may not be “drivers” in the current sense. As Matthiesen told Recode:
“Drivers have always been part of our family, they have been core to our service. As far as I’m concerned, they will continue to be that. Over time, technology will give us the opportunity to provide additional services on our platform, whether that is a concierge service, whether that is an in-vehicle experience … these are all things that we will slowly evolve and work with our drivers on.“
“If I need to go to the doctor’s office and my leg is in a cast, and I can’t drive, we have a service for that,” he said. “If you get into the world of autonomous, we may need someone in that vehicle to help that person. There are things we’re doing beyond getting a passenger from point A to point B, additional services that we as a company can look at.“
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