Lyft partnering with Magna

Ride-hailing service, car-parts maker to jointly develop, manufacture self-driving car systems

SAN FRANCISCO — The ridehailing service Lyft has agreed to alliances with just about anyone working on driverless car technology. Its latest partnership aims to make its autonomous vehicle technology available to any car manufacturer.

Lyft said Wednesday that it had reached a deal with Canada’s Magna International, one of the world’s biggest auto suppliers, to jointly develop and manufacture self-driving car systems.

The companies said they will work together to introduce autonomous vehicles to Lyft’s ridehailing network. At the same time, Magna can sell the driverless-car technology to any customer — including other technology companies.

Magna also said it would invest $200 million in Lyft’s latest fundraising round, increasing the San Francisco-based company’s valuation to $11.7 billion.

The partnership reflects Lyft’s open-arms approach to autonomous vehicles.

Lyft has opened its ride-hailing network to other companies working on self-driving cars, including Ford and General Motors, a major Lyft investor, so they can gain real-world experience by picking up passengers and collecting data.

Magna already supplies a wide range of driver-assist technology to its customers, including a system for staying in lanes, automatic emergency braking and rear-view cameras. It also builds entire vehicles for customers like Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Jaguar.

Magna has already been working on hardware for self-driving cars, including radar and lidar — an abbreviation for light detection and ranging — that help the vehicles see the world around them.

But Magna said the partnership with Lyft would be essential to helping it push further into autonomous vehicles, combining its automotive and manufacturing experience with Lyft’s ride network to better understand the many situations that a self-driving car will encounter.

“The question isn’t whether autonomous vehicles are going to happen but how long the transition is,” said Swamy Kotagiri, Magna’s chief technology officer.