Exclusive: Lyft CEO Lays Out His Vision of the Driverless Future

Lyft, the nation's second-largest ride-hailing service, expects autonomous vehicles to account for a majority of its rides within five years, CEO John Zimmer told TIME in an exclusive interview. Days after its chief rival Uber's self-driving cars began ferrying passengers in Pittsburgh, Zimmer also said he expects car ownership will "all but end" in major U.S. 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 tells TIME. And he believes that this is how the self-driving revolution will come to the masses: not by consumers swapping out their old cars for fully autonomous personal vehicles but by consumers paying for rides in self-driving cars they don't own, with the type of trip restricted heavily at first and then growing more complicated as technology and regulations advance. That is also the logic on which his five-year prediction is built.