Lyft offers free rides in its self-driving cars

If you're in the Bay Area and you order a Lyft, a self-driving car could show up. The ride sharing company is partnering with drive.ai to bring free rides to select customers in self-driving cars. The trial is starting soon but we don't have an exact date or know how Lyft will choose those select customers. Drive dot A I is a company that makes autonomous vehicle software rather than the cars themselves. They retrofit existing vehicles, included the Lincoln MKZ with the kit Arch rival Uber is well underway with its self-driving car program in cities like Pittsburgh. But you might remember that Uber had to pull the autonomous cars from San Francisco roads because it didn't have the right Registrations. At the moment, Lyft doesn't have a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test self-driving cars. But drive.ai does. That permit covers six cars and 12 drivers. So it might give you an idea of how many cars will be out on the road to start with. For Lyft's pilot program, there's still going to be a person behind the wheel, that's California law. Just because Lyft is partnering with drive.ai doesn't mean it's not keeping its options open, though. In July, Lyft announced it was developing its own hardware and software for autonomous vehicles. Keep your high beams on all the latest self driving car news on cnet.com.