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Magna to invest $200 million in Lyft and manufacture self-driving systems ‘at scale’

Magna, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers, and Lyft, a rideshare company, have agreed 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 wide range of use cases to benefit the entire global mobility ecosystem.

Swamy Kotagiri, Magna chief technology officer, says: “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 makes this strategic partnership ideal to effect a positive change as a new transportation ecosystem unfolds.”

Lyft CEO Logan Green says: “Together with Magna, we will accelerate the introduction of self-driving vehicles by sharing our technology with automotive OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] worldwide.

“This is an entirely new approach that will democratize access to this transformative technology.”

Partnership details include:

  • Lyft will lead the co-development of the self-driving system at its Palo Alto-based self-driving engineering center
  • 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 utilize Lyft data to improve systems
  • Lyft will utilize Magna’s vast automotive experience for its fleet’s self-driving systems
  • This scalable technology is expected to be market-ready over the next few years and can be deployed across the industry through Magna