Magna joins Lyft to make self-driving systems
Magna, a mobility technology company and one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, and Lyft, North America’s fastest growing rideshare company, has announced a multi-year collaboration in which the companies will jointly fund, develop, and manufacture self-driving systems. In addition, Magna will invest $200 million in Lyft equity. The establishment of this partnership is subject to regulatory approval.
This partnership is an industry-first and positions Magna and Lyft to enable the development and manufacturing of self-driving systems at scale. In addition to self-driving vehicles that will be deployed on Lyft’s own ridesharing network in the coming years, Magna has the ability to deploy the technologies across a widerange of use cases to benefit the entire global mobility ecosystem.
“There is a new mobility landscape emerging and partnerships like this put us at the forefront of this change. Lyft’s leadership in ridesharing and Magna’s automotive expertise make this strategic partnership ideal to effect a positive change as a new transportation ecosystem unfolds,” Swamy Kotagiri, Magna Chief Technology Officer, said.
“Together with Magna, we will accelerate the introduction of self-driving vehicles by sharing our technology with automotive OEMs worldwide. This is an entirely new approach that will democratise access to this transformative technology,” Lyft CEO, Logan Green, said.
The partnership details include: Lyft will lead the co-development of the self-driving system at its Palo Alto-based self-driving engineering centre; Magna will lead manufacturing and join Lyft’s development team onsite, contributing their vehicle systems knowledge, safety and ADAS expertise, and manufacturing capabilities; Lyft and Magna will share jointly-created IP and utilise Lyft data to improve systems; and Lyft will utilise Magna’s vast automotive experience for its fleet’s self-driving systems. This scalable technology is expected to be market-ready in a few years and can be deployed across the industry through Magna.