Ride-hailing vendor Lyft has signed a multi-year agreement with Magna to jointly fund, develop and manufacture a self-driving system.
With all of the automotive car OEMs developing their own self-driving cars as well as start-ups and Uber, Lyft is keeping pace by developing its own system. Magna will invest $200 million in Lyft equity to develop and manufacture self-driving systems at scale.
Furthermore, the autonomous vehicles will be deployed on Lyft’s ridesharing network in the coming years.
"There is a new mobility landscape emerging and partnerships like this put us at the forefront of this change," says Swamy Kotagiri, Magna Chief Technology Officer. "Lyft's leadership in ridesharing and Magna's automotive expertise makes this strategic partnership ideal to effect a positive change as a new transportation ecosystem unfolds."
Under the partnership, Lyft will lead the co-development of the self-driving system out of its Palo Alto, Calif.-based self-driving engineering center. Magna will lead the manufacturing and join Lyft’s development team onsite for vehicle systems knowledge, safety and automotive driver assistance systems (ADAS). Both companies will share the created IP and utilized Lyft’s data to improve the systems.
The technology is expected to be market-ready over the next few years and will be deployed across the industry through Magna.
