Lyft opened an 80,000-square-foot facility in Tennessee. It isn't a data center.

A erstwhile US Postal Service facility near Nashville isn't accommodation servers. Instead, it's been renovated for self-driving cars.

The facility opened on Thursday under the administration of Flexdrive, Lyft's car-rental arm. Later this month, autonomous vehicles from Alphabet-backed Waymo volition commencement pulling in whenever they need a charge, repairs, a clean, or another care in between shuttling passengers about the Southern city, Lyft stated on Friday.

The 80,000-square-foot depot is the latest example of a big funding that companies need to create to get in on the robotaxi game: A location to home and fix the vehicles whenever they're not providing rides.

It's a need that's example real asset investment from ride-hailing services akin Uber and Lyft, the companies rearward the self-driving cars, and another players, specified as companies that create EV charging infrastructure.

Lyft's Nashville facility has "dozens of chargers capable of supporting hundreds of autonomous vehicles," the business said on Friday. There are additionally bays to activity on cars and safe retention for parts, Lyft said.

The depot is staffed by concerning 70 full-time employees, the business said, and it sees possible "to create hundreds of jobs in the coming years."

Many of the group Lyft employs at the new facility used to be Lyft drivers themselves. For ride-hailing drivers, cleaning or servicing self-driving cars at a depot is an chance to prosecute a new occupation path, Parks told Business Insider in June.

"If you desire to get skilled up during you're operating at one of our depots and afterward go activity location else, great," Parks said.

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