Lyft leap in self-driving car plans

RIDE-HAILING company Lyft is joining large Canadian auto parts supplier Magna to develop self-driving vehicles, sharing expenses on a multiyear project that could vault them onto the leaderboard in autonomous technology.

The companies announced the partnership yesterday and also said Magna would invest $200 million in Lyft.

Raj Kapoor, Lyft’s chief strategy officer, says Lyft needs auto industry expertise to make autonomous vehicle components and build vehicles.

Automakers know how to design vehicles so they meet regulations and can be manufactured easily, Kapoor said.

“The auto industry has perfected all of these tools and all of those processes,” he said.

Once technology is developed, Magna would be free to sell it to other companies, which would be encouraged to place their vehicles onto Lyft’s ridesharing network, Kapoor said.

Magna International Inc., based near Toronto, has about 168,000 employees worldwide. It also builds cars under contract in Austria for Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar. By next year, Magna expects its factory in Graz to be able to build over 200,000 vehicles per year.