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| Toyota acquires self-driving car division in Lyft |
Bus company Lyft sold its self-driving car unit to the Toyota Woven Planet for $ 550 million.
The deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions increasing the cost and time to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology.
As per the acquisition agreement, Lyft's Tier 5 division will be merged with the Woven Planet.
Lyft received $ 550 million in cash, of which $ 200 million was prepaid and the remaining $ 350 million was paid out over five years.
Nearly 300 employees were brought into the Level 5 Lyft division of the Woven Planet, and the Level 5 team has grown to over 400 in early 2020 and continues to operate out of the Palo Alto California office.
The deal officially ends Lyft's nearly four years of work in developing its self-driving cars.
The company is tracking rival Uber, which sold its self-driving car unit to Aurora last year to avoid losses.
Lyft aims to be the passenger sharing network and fleet management platform used by all commercial automated taxi services.
Lyft has partnered with independent auto developers including Motional, a $ 4 billion joint venture between Hyundai, Aptiv and Waymo.
As part of the acquisition agreement, Woven Planet signed a commercial agreement to use Lyft's platform and fleet data.
Lyft said: The agreement with Woven Planet is not exclusive and continues to work with Motional and other companies.
Working together for more than three years, Motional and Lyft began working together on a one-week pilot program offering self-driving car sharing over the Lyft network in Las Vegas at the CES 2018 Tech Show.
This tentative test always consists of security ladders, and has been expanded and used to this day. As of February 2020, the program has offered more than 100,000 self-driving cars with miles driven.
In December, Motional announced plans to use Lyft's ridesharing network to launch fully automated unmanned taxi services in major US cities in 2023.
Despite some technical successes, self-driving cars are far from any form of mass adoption, and most cars on the road today are still test cars, with most of the major players refusing to meet the deadline. marketing.