Uber rival Lyft plans driverless cabs

Lyft, America's second-largest ride-hailing service after Uber, expects self-driving cars to account for a majority of its rides within five years, co-founder and president John Zimmer said.

Zimmer told TIME in an interview he expects car ownership will "all but end" in major US cities in less than 10 years.

"There are already specific trips—whether it's just on this street or just at this time in this perfect weather condition—that an autonomous vehicle could do today," Zimmer said.

This comes days after Uber's self-driving cars began ferrying passengers in Pittsburgh.

Zimmer believes the self-driving revolution will come to the masses not by consumers swapping their old cars for fully autonomous personal vehicles but by consumers paying for rides in self-driving cars they don't own.

As of August 2016, Lyft was doing 14.6 million rides per month, triple the volume a year before. Uber, which competes with Ola in India, became the first company to bring self-driving cars to market even though Google was conducting similar tests longer than Uber.

Zimmer did not comment on whether Lyft will exclusively work with General Motors Co in reaching this five-year milestone, nor did he say how many self-driving cars he believed would be required to cover the majority of Lyft trips at that point.

Automaker GM had invested $500 million in Lyft in January and was previously reported to be interested in acquiring the ride-hailing company, an attempt that was said to be rebuffed.

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