How Uber and Lyft Are Gearing Up for the Robotaxi Revolution
优步和 Lyft 如何为自动驾驶出租车革命做准备

Both companies will have driverless cars—from Alphabet’s GOOGL 1.25%increase; green up pointing triangle Waymo and others—on their apps this year. In the coming months, riders in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta will be able to hail a Waymo through the Uber app. Lyft plans to offer May Mobility’s driverless taxis in Atlanta.
两家公司今年都将在其应用上提供无人驾驶汽车——包括 Alphabet 的 GOOGL1.25% Waymo 和其他公司——德克萨斯州奥斯汀和亚特兰大的乘客将在未来几个月内能够通过 Uber 应用叫到 Waymo，Lyft 计划在亚特兰大提供 May Mobility 的无人驾驶出租车。

Uber and Lyft have agreed to maintain these driverless fleets. They are finding locations to store the cars, equipping them with chargers and high-speed internet, and training workers to maintain the cameras, lidar and other gadgets that driverless vehicles depend on. 
优步和 Lyft 已同意维持这些无人驾驶车队。他们正在寻找存放汽车的位置，为汽车配备充电器和高速互联网，并培训工人维护无人驾驶车辆所依赖的摄像头、激光雷达和其他设备。

“This level of nitty-gritty, it takes years to build,” said Andrew Macdonald, Uber’s senior vice president of mobility. “It’s not something you can do by flipping a switch.” 
这个细节程度，需要多年才能建立，”优步移动高级副总裁安德鲁·麦克唐纳说。“这不是你一按开关就能做到的事情。”

The ride-hailing giants are reacting to growing signs that driverless technology may finally be ready to spread beyond a few experimental markets. 
网约车巨头正在对越来越多的迹象做出反应，这些迹象表明自动驾驶技术可能终于准备好从几个实验性市场扩展出去。

Waymo, which made its own app available to the general public in San Francisco last year, is challenging Uber and Lyft’s stronghold in parts of the city, according to market-research firm YipitData. And the swift adoption of driverless cars has some gig drivers worried.
威马去年在旧金山向公众开放了自己的应用程序，根据市场研究公司 YipitData 的说法，它正在挑战优步和 Lyft 在城市的部分地区的主导地位。自动驾驶汽车的快速普及让一些网约车司机感到担忧。

Driverless U-turns  自动驾驶的 U 型转弯

Uber and Lyft once invested billions of dollars in developing their own self-driving cars. Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick used to say the company needed to lead the pivot to driverless technology or risk becoming irrelevant. 
优步和 Lyft 曾投资数十亿美元开发自己的自动驾驶汽车。优步联合创始人特拉维斯·卡兰尼克曾表示，公司需要引领向自动驾驶技术的转型，否则可能变得无关紧要。

Both companies gave up on the costly endeavor during the pandemic, selling their self-driving units. Now they are competing to be the platforms on which the robotaxi technology developed by others will operate. 
两家公司在大流行期间放弃了这项代价高昂的尝试，出售了它们的自动驾驶单元。现在，它们正竞争成为其他公司开发的机器人出租车技术运行的平台。

Uber announced more than five U.S. robotaxi partnerships in the past five months, covering Los Angeles, Dallas and other cities. Uber struck a deal with Waymo that will allow customers in Austin and Atlanta to hail the company’s driverless taxis only through the Uber app, a move that will prevent the driverless carmaker from taking market share in those cities. Waymo will continue to operate its own app in other cities.
优步在过去五个月内宣布了超过五项美国自动驾驶出租车合作，覆盖洛杉矶、达拉斯和其他城市。优步与 Waymo 达成协议，允许奥斯汀和亚特兰大的客户仅通过优步应用叫车，这一举措将阻止自动驾驶汽车制造商在这些城市抢占市场份额。Waymo 将继续在其他城市运营自己的应用。

Uber and Lyft will get a cut of the driverless taxi bookings. The robotaxi companies get access to the ride-sharing giants’ tens of millions of customers without having to advertise or build the expensive technology needed to efficiently connect cars to customers.
优步和 Lyft 将获得无人出租车预订的分成。机器人出租车公司无需进行广告或构建连接汽车与客户所需的高昂技术，即可获得共享出行巨头数千万客户的访问权限。

Self-driving taxis have yet to prove they can be a viable business. But the ride-hailing leaders are betting robotaxi companies will prefer to join with already popular, established platforms to avoid downtime for their vehicles. 
自动驾驶出租车尚未证明其能成为可行的商业模式。但网约车领导者们认为，自动驾驶出租车公司更愿意加入已经流行、成熟的平台，以避免车辆停运。

Human-driven cabs aren’t going away anytime soon. The future will be a combination of regular taxis and driverless cars. Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi has said it might take a decade before half of Uber’s U.S. trips are on self-driving cars. 
人类驾驶的出租车在不久的将来不会消失。未来将是常规出租车和无人驾驶汽车的结合。优步首席执行官达拉·科斯罗萨希表示，可能需要十年时间才能有半数优步的美国行程是在自动驾驶汽车上。

Even then, the technology might not work in densely populated cities like New York or under some weather conditions, said Robert Mollins, analyst at Gordon Haskett Research Advisors.
即便如此，这项技术可能在像纽约这样人口密集的城市或某些天气条件下无法工作，戈登·哈斯凯特研究顾问公司的分析师罗伯特·莫林斯表示。

“No one’s saying ‘let’s go send some of these cars to Boston in the middle of winter,’” he said. “What happens when all of these sensors get covered in snow?” 
“没有人说‘让我们在冬天把这些车送到波士顿去’，他说。‘当所有这些传感器都被雪覆盖时会发生什么？’”

General Motors recently pulled the plug on developing its Cruise self-driving cars. Tesla plans to start producing its Cybercab before 2027. Amazon.com is testing its Zoox autonomous vehicles.
通用汽车最近停止了其 Cruise 自动驾驶汽车的开发。特斯拉计划在 2027 年之前开始生产其 Cybercab。亚马逊正在测试其 Zoox 自动驾驶汽车。

Riders hail the new tech
骑手们称赞这项新技术

Still, customers seem to be warming up to the technology. In August, Waymos picked up close to 500,000 passengers in California, up from fewer than 20,000 a year earlier.
尽管如此，客户似乎开始接受这项技术。8 月份，Waymos 在加利福尼亚州接载了近 50 万名乘客，比一年前的不到 2 万名有所增加。

Consumer receipts analyzed by YipitData within Waymo’s operating zone in San Francisco found that the company had taken a 22% share in November. Lyft’s share in the area fell to 22% the same month, from 34% in August 2023. Uber’s share in the area slipped 10 percentage points to 55% over the same period.
旧金山 Waymo 运营区域内，YipitData 分析的消费者收据显示，该公司在 11 月占据了 22%的市场份额。Lyft 在同一地区的市场份额在同年降至 22%，从 2023 年 8 月的 34%下降。Uber 在同一时期的市场份额下降了 10 个百分点，达到 55%。

Uber and Lyft said they haven’t lost riders to Waymo, and their bookings continue to grow in the city.
优步和 Lyft 表示，他们并未失去任何乘客给 Waymo，他们的订单量在城市中仍在增长。

Lyft CEO David Risher said self-driving cars have expanded the overall ride-hailing market by giving people new reasons to ride. 
Lyft 首席执行官大卫·里斯表示，自动驾驶汽车通过给人们提供新的出行理由，扩大了整体网约车市场。

He said tourists in San Francisco are ordering driverless taxis for their novelty and because Waymo uses high-end Jaguars—a luxury that won’t be the norm as automated-vehicle technology gets installed in less-luxurious cars. 
他说，旧金山的游客因为无人驾驶出租车的 novelty 以及 Waymo 使用高端捷豹——这种豪华不会成为 norm，因为自动驾驶汽车技术被安装在更豪华的汽车中。

“Tomorrow’s AV experience will be quite different,” he said on an earnings call. 
“明天的 AV 体验将会有很大不同，”他在财报电话会议上说。

Daniel Garcia was among a small group of San Franciscans who tested Waymos free of charge from 2023. He loved that he could avoid small talk with another human while controlling the temperature and music. He stopped using Uber and Lyft.
丹尼尔·加西亚是少数几位从 2023 年开始免费试用 Waymo 的旧金山居民之一。他喜欢能够避免与另一个人闲聊，同时控制温度和音乐。他停止使用 Uber 和 Lyft。

After Waymo started charging and allowing everyone on the app, the wait times started getting longer and fares climbed. “It really was a dream until it was harder to get it,” Garcia said. 
在 Waymo 开始收费并允许所有人在应用上使用后，等待时间开始变长，车费也上涨。“这真是一个梦，直到它变得难以实现，”加西亚说。

He has started using Uber and Lyft again, but not as much as he used to because he will still wait for a Waymo when he has time.
他已经又开始使用 Uber 和 Lyft 了，但不像以前那么频繁，因为他有时间还是会等 Waymo。

Uber won’t say how much it is investing in driverless-taxi infrastructure. It is still a small amount, said analyst Mollins. “All they are doing right now is learning—everything is in test and learn mode.” 
优步没有透露它在自动驾驶出租车基础设施上的投资金额。分析师莫林斯表示，这仍然是一笔小数目。“他们现在只是在学习——一切都在测试和学习模式中。”

Uber created a feature on its app that will allow customers to remotely honk the horn of a driverless taxi to help them locate their ride. It is scouting for locations for autonomous-vehicle depots that will store and service the cars in areas that aren’t too far from rider traffic.
优步在其应用程序中创建了一个功能，允许客户远程按响无人驾驶出租车的喇叭，帮助他们找到车辆。该公司正在寻找自动驾驶车辆停车场的地点，这些停车场将存储并维护位于乘客流量不太密集地区的汽车。

The company is working with existing fleet partners—the ones that operate the premium Uber Black service—to transform their facilities into hubs for autonomous vehicles. That means equipping them with hundreds of electric charging stations and raising the internet speed to 10 times that of a typical office to handle all the data the driverless taxis need. 
该公司正在与现有的车队合作伙伴——那些运营高端优步黑色服务的合作伙伴——合作，将他们的设施转变为自动驾驶汽车的枢纽。这意味着为他们配备数百个电动汽车充电站，并将互联网速度提高到典型办公室的 10 倍，以处理无人驾驶出租车所需的所有数据。

Lyft is transforming its Flexdrive car-rental locations into depots for driverless taxis and adding new features to its app. Riders will be able to adjust the temperature inside a driverless car through their phones. 
Lyft 正在将其 Flexdrive 汽车租赁点转变为无人驾驶出租车的仓库，并在其应用程序中添加新功能。乘客将能够通过手机调整无人驾驶车内的温度。

The company has trained artificial intelligence on its app to answer riders’ basic questions about unlocking cars and starting rides. It is teaching staff “to do some of the more thornier things” like helping customers retrieve lost items from driverless cars, said Jeremy Bird, an executive vice president at Lyft. 
该公司在其应用程序上训练了人工智能来回答乘客关于解锁汽车和开始行程的基本问题。Lyft 执行副总裁杰里米·伯德表示，公司正在教导员工“做一些更棘手的事情”，比如帮助客户从无人驾驶汽车中找回丢失物品。

The company is also building technology to let individuals list their personal autonomous vehicles on its app. “You can have your own fleet of 10 AVs, which you can put on our platform and manage,” Bird said.
该公司还在开发技术，让个人可以在其应用程序上列出他们的个人自动驾驶汽车。“你可以拥有自己的 10 辆自动驾驶汽车车队，你可以将它们放在我们的平台上进行管理，”Bird 说。

Some human drivers are feeling squeezed out. 
一些人类驾驶员感到被挤压出局。

San Francisco Bay Area Lyft driver Ghulam Sakhi said it was already tough to make money after companies cut back on bonuses a few years ago. Then, last year, finding some of the high-paying trips became tougher.
旧金山湾区 Lyft 司机 Ghulam Sakhi 表示，在几年前公司削减奖金后，赚钱已经很困难了。然后，去年，找到一些高薪行程变得更加困难。

With competition from Waymo weighing on fares in tourist hot spots and downtown, Sakhi is ferrying passengers to and from the airport, where driverless taxis aren’t allowed to go. 
与 Waymo 在热门旅游区和市中心的竞争对票价产生影响时，Sakhi 正在运送乘客往返机场，而无人驾驶出租车不允许进入那里。

“Waymo isn’t the only problem,” he said. “Maybe next year the Tesla robotaxi will come. What about those?” 
“Waymo 不是唯一的问题，”他说。“也许明年特斯拉的无人驾驶出租车就会到来。那些呢？”

Write to Preetika Rana at preetika.rana@wsj.com
给 Preetika Rana 发送邮件至 preetika.rana@wsj.com