CES 2019: Ride along with us in an autonomous Lyft

Self driving cars are a hot topic here at CES 2019, and ride hailing service Lyft have been offering rides in self driving cars, here in Las Vegas, since last May. I opted in the second I got off of the plane, I had to try it out, but unfortunately I've only been paired with human drivers so far. That changes now. Come on, we're going to go for a drive. [MUSIC] So the car you're getting into is a BMW 540i that lives partner active. Just bought off the lot and retrofitted with cameras, [UNKNOWN] and a whole mess of sensors. It even has an autonomous license plate for the state of Nevada. Each autonomous vehicle has to have two drivers. One behind the wheel, the safety operator who's kind of like a co-pilot. If you're in Vegas, every ride starts with manual mode, and that is because this is private property here in the casion. As soon as we get onto the public road that's when we switch over to autonomous Smooth. [MUSIC] One thing I notice is as we're stopping and starting here at the light on the Las Vegas trip is how smooth the car is. It just feels like Bernal here is a very careful driver. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] A car could just kinda cut in front of us really quickly, and we did break. But it felt smooth, and we didn't get too close to it. Honestly, sitting in the back seat, if I weren't paying attention at all, I would have absolutely no idea that we were in a self-driving car. It may seem at first that there's not a lot for the driver to do, but they really have to pay attention to the road, and they've gotta really make sure that all of the turns and all of the stops and all of the starts are actually synched and that the car is performing as Is expected to. The driver also isn't just window dressing. You know, thery're manually starting the car on private roads. They're helping you and they're interfacing between not just the technology but the company and you, if you've got a problem, there's a human that you can talk to. You're not just trapped inside of a metal machine. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Here in the back, we've got a screen. And this really, I think, will help engage the passenger to show them exactly where they're going so they've got that level of confidence. Right now this is what we're seeing, but in the future we could see a lot more information that explains the technology. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Okay, so this ride was pretty short. And to be honest, it was a little bit boring, because nothing really happened, but that's good, right? Because when you're a passenger, not much is supposed to happen. I got from point A to point B using the same app, it was really simple. I think there is an initial curiosity about what's going on. And then I think that once people become used to it that curiosity is gonna wear off. And your gonna go beck to spending your entire Lift ride talking to the driver or the not driver or looking at your phone. So it was just really exciting to be part of something that is going to so tremendously change the way that people get around. This is the future we're looking at right here. If you wanna know more about autonomous vehicles check out CNET and our sister site RoadShow. [MUSIC]