One of the world’s largest automotive suppliers Magna and a rideshare company Lyft have made an announcement that a multi-year collaboration is on cards and both the companies will jointly fund, develop, and manufacture self-driving systems.
Magna declared that it will be investing $200 million in Lyft and this partnership will see both companies develop and manufacture self-driving systems. Besides self-driving vehicles, which will be deployed on Lyft’s own ridesharing network in the coming years, Magna has the capability to expand the technologies across a wide range of use cases to avail the entire global mobility ecosystem.
“There is a new mobility landscape emerging and partnerships like this put us at the forefront of this change,” said Swamy Kotagiri, Magna Chief Technology Officer. “Lyft’s leadership in ridesharing and Magna’s automotive expertise makes this sategic partnership ideal to effect a positive change as a new transportation ecosystem unfolds.”
The co-development of the self-driving system will be lead by Lyft at Palo Alto-based self-driving engineering centre and Magna will lead manufacturing and join Lyft’s development team onsite, contributing their vehicle systems knowledge, safety and ADAS expertise, and manufacturing capabilities.
Lyft will make use of Magna’s automotive experience for its fleet’s self-driving systems. This scalable technology could be market-ready over the next few years and can be deployed across the industry through Magna.
“Together with Magna, we will accelerate the introduction of self-driving vehicles by sharing our technology with automotive OEMs worldwide,” said Lyft CEO Logan Green. “This is an entirely new approach that will democratize access to this transformative technology.”