Newsletter 
Lyft recently recruited Luc Vincent, Google’s Senior Director of Engineering who worked on Google Maps and helped create Street View, one of the most popular features of Google’s navigational service. The San Francisco-based firm reportedly hired Vincent to head its maps and marketplace units. Google’s former employee is expected to help Lyft redesign the way it manages its vehicle fleet. Among other things, he will be tasked with improving the process of hailing a ride using the Lyft app and come up with new ways to help the company’s drivers navigate their surroundings. In an interview with The Verge, Vincent said that Lyft isn’t just striving to be a better taxi service but is actually aiming to “rethink transportation” and all of the logistics pertaining to it. Those ambitions and Vincent’s personal belief that Lyft has what it takes to change transportation for the better are the reasons why he decided to join the ride-hailing company.
Vincent already started discussing new hirings with Chris Lambert, Lyft’s Chief Technology Officer. The two are working together with the company’s Vice President of Engineering Peter Morelli, and the trio will presumably develop a plan to accomplish the firm’s ambitious goal of almost fully transitioning to driverless vehicles by 2021. The company likely considers hiring Vincent as a big win seeing how a lot of Google’s top engineers were previously poached by Uber, Lyft’s main competitor. Google’s former Senior Director of Engineering may play a major part in fulfilling Lyft’s ambitions to transition to driverless vehicles given his expertise in the field of navigational services.
The San Francisco-based ride-hailing company has recently been hard at work trying to expand its business. Among other things, the firm introduced a method for customers to hail a Lyft without using the company’s mobile app and started aggressively investing into self-driving technologies. Lyft’s new focus on driverless vehicles mimics that of Uber, as both ride-hailing services believe that autonomous vehicles are the future of this industry not only because they’re cheaper than human drivers, but also because they are less prone to errors. Overall, some exciting years are seemingly ahead of Lyft, but it remains to be seen whether the company will manage to fulfill all of its self-driving ambitions come 2021.