On Wednesday morning, Ford revealed that it is the latest OEM to partner with Lyft as it prepares to put self-driving cars on the roads in a few short years. In a post on Medium, Ford VP of Autonomous Vehicles and Electrification Sherif Marakby explained that the Blue Oval chose the Pink Mustache to help build out the infrastructure that will connect customers with its autonomous transport service once it's ready.

Building out a successful ride-hailing service isn't that simple. All the backend stuff has to work properly—matching drivers and riders and so on—but there's the not-insignificant matter of persuading people to sign up, to trust you enough to use your service, and to tell their friends.

That poses a potential problem for the legion of car companies and tech firms that plan to put self-driving mobility pods on our roads in just a few short years; their competencies lie in designing the AI platforms or building the autonomous vehicles.

It's easier to partner with an existing player in the ride-hailing market, one that has already done the hard work of building up a user base and winning our trust. That basically means either Lyft or Uber, which have seen off rivals like Sidecar and now have the lions' share to themselves. And as Tim Lee explained earlier this month, Uber isn't interested in teaming up with others.

Lyft, on the other hand, seems willing to work with all-comers. It has been working with General Motors for a while now; the OEM invested $500 million in the platform in 2016, and the two have plans to put self-driving Chevrolet Bolts on the streets in 2018. More recently Waymo and Lyft got into bed together, a move that might lead to an even larger investment in Lyft by Waymo's parent company Alphabet. And now Ford joins the Lyft network.

According to Marakby, Ford and Lyft will be working together to decide which cities to target for the future driverless car service, as well as what kind of support infrastructure will be necessary. But for starters, Ford is only going to use human-driven vehicles to actually ferry around paying customers. Although self-driving Fords will be connected to the network they won't shuttle around the public until Ford is confident that the "technology delivers a positive, reassuring experience."