As the second-largest U.S. ride-hailing company tries to capitalize on missteps by Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc. is expanding its roster of automotive partners.
Jaguar Land Rover said that it will offer vehicles for rent to the San Francisco-based startup’s drivers and it is now working with Lyft on development of its own autonomous-driving technology. As part of a funding round that closed in April, valuing the business at $7.5 billion, the automaker also disclosed an investment of $25 million in Lyft. The Jaguar Land Rover is a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd.
The trend that most of the global automakers are hedging their best in the competitive ride-hailing market is shown by the investment.
Previously a financing partnership was formed in India last year between Tata Group and Uber to the tune of $100 million in the ride hailing company. Tata Group is the owner of both Tata Motors and Jaguar. After rolling out a similar program with Lyft, last year, work on a car-sharing project was ongoing between General Motors Co. and Uber. It may be recalled the GM is also major Lyft investor and partner.
Last month there was a surprise announcement that the ride-hailing startup – Lyft, is working with Alphabets Inc.’s Waymo and hence this latest partnership of the ride hailing company with Jaguar follows on the heels of last month’s announcement and has aroused interest among market participants. Even though Waymo’s parent company is an Uber investor, the Google sister company is suing Uber over self-driving car technology. Lyft said last week that it struck a similar alliance with startup NuTonomy and in addition to Jaguar and Waymo, Lyft works with GM on autonomous driving projects.
“Different partners have different skill sets, and this is such a big opportunity,” said John Zimmer, Lyft’s co-founder and president. “Broadly speaking, it’s going to play out over the next five to ten years, and it’s critical that we have multiple partners in various spaces and geographies.”
There are several allies for Uber as well. In the platform of autonomous driving technology, agreements with Daimler AG and Volvo Cars is present for the company. A self-driving technology developed in-house, which is currently being tested with customers on public roads, also saw the company spending hundreds of millions on it.
However, it is yet to be clear Bottom of Form
how self-driving cars will be deployed in the coming decades. One day in the future, competition from new autonomous ride-hailing systems could be faced or share profits with self-driving technology makers that operate cars on their networks after their own autonomous vehicles, are bought by ride-hailing companies like Lyft, India’s Ola, China’s Didi Chuxing or Uber. For example, interest in creating such a service for his customers has been expressed by Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk.
“We think this is a really long game,” Zimmer said. “I used to run the mile. The mile is a four-lap race, and we might be in lap two.”
(Source:www.bloomberg.com)
Jaguar Land Rover said that it will offer vehicles for rent to the San Francisco-based startup’s drivers and it is now working with Lyft on development of its own autonomous-driving technology. As part of a funding round that closed in April, valuing the business at $7.5 billion, the automaker also disclosed an investment of $25 million in Lyft. The Jaguar Land Rover is a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd.
The trend that most of the global automakers are hedging their best in the competitive ride-hailing market is shown by the investment.
Previously a financing partnership was formed in India last year between Tata Group and Uber to the tune of $100 million in the ride hailing company. Tata Group is the owner of both Tata Motors and Jaguar. After rolling out a similar program with Lyft, last year, work on a car-sharing project was ongoing between General Motors Co. and Uber. It may be recalled the GM is also major Lyft investor and partner.
Last month there was a surprise announcement that the ride-hailing startup – Lyft, is working with Alphabets Inc.’s Waymo and hence this latest partnership of the ride hailing company with Jaguar follows on the heels of last month’s announcement and has aroused interest among market participants. Even though Waymo’s parent company is an Uber investor, the Google sister company is suing Uber over self-driving car technology. Lyft said last week that it struck a similar alliance with startup NuTonomy and in addition to Jaguar and Waymo, Lyft works with GM on autonomous driving projects.
“Different partners have different skill sets, and this is such a big opportunity,” said John Zimmer, Lyft’s co-founder and president. “Broadly speaking, it’s going to play out over the next five to ten years, and it’s critical that we have multiple partners in various spaces and geographies.”
There are several allies for Uber as well. In the platform of autonomous driving technology, agreements with Daimler AG and Volvo Cars is present for the company. A self-driving technology developed in-house, which is currently being tested with customers on public roads, also saw the company spending hundreds of millions on it.
However, it is yet to be clear Bottom of Form
how self-driving cars will be deployed in the coming decades. One day in the future, competition from new autonomous ride-hailing systems could be faced or share profits with self-driving technology makers that operate cars on their networks after their own autonomous vehicles, are bought by ride-hailing companies like Lyft, India’s Ola, China’s Didi Chuxing or Uber. For example, interest in creating such a service for his customers has been expressed by Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk.
“We think this is a really long game,” Zimmer said. “I used to run the mile. The mile is a four-lap race, and we might be in lap two.”
(Source:www.bloomberg.com)
