Ride-hailing company partners with nuTonomy in latest battle with US rival

Ride-hailing company Lyft, Uber’s chief US rival, will begin its first pilot programme for self-driving taxis in Boston later this year in conjunction with nuTonomy, the autonomous car start-up.

The partnership will present a new competitive challenge to Uber, which recently fired its top self-driving engineer and is in the middle of a trade secrets lawsuit from Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet.

San Francisco-based Lyft has taken a very different approach to autonomous vehicles than Uber by partnering with other companies rather than trying to develop its own technology in-house.