The sale moves that accumulated program, including roughly 300 employees, to Toyota’s Woven Planet subsidiary rather than extending Lyft’s role as a standalone developer. It matters because Toyota had already pursued autonomous-vehicle development through its investment and joint-development arrangement with Uber.
First-order effects
Toyota’s Woven Planet gains Lyft Level 5’s staff and development assets for $550M, enlarging Toyota’s internal autonomous-driving operation.
Lyft gives up the unit it created to build its own self-driving system, ending its direct ownership of that development program.
Second-order effects
Toyota now consolidates autonomous-driving efforts spanning an acquired Lyft team and its earlier Uber partnership, increasing the strategic value of automaker-backed development programs relative to ride-hailing-owned ones.
Lyft’s earlier suppliers and technology partners, including Magna and Blue Vision Labs’ acquired capabilities, lose Level 5 as an independent Lyft-led integration path.
Third-order effects
The transaction points toward autonomous-driving R&D concentrating with automakers and their dedicated subsidiaries, while ride-hailing platforms become less likely to carry full-stack development organizations themselves.
If similar transfers continue, the key competitive divide will be between companies able to finance long-cycle vehicle development and platforms that access autonomy through partnerships or purchased services.
The trend: Autonomous-driving development is shifting from ride-hailing companies’ standalone labs toward automaker-controlled organizations that can consolidate teams, partnerships, and vehicle programs.
remember when everyone believed fully self-driving AVs were right around the corner and poured all this money into unprofitable startups like Uber and Lyft because they were The Future and now Uber and Lyft are no longer doing AV research and are instead stomping on labor laws?? …
Less than six months after Uber paid to get rid of its AV division, Lyft has dumped its own. The big promises of automating drivers was never going to happen; it was always about stringing investors along with the next big plan. When will ride-hailing companies finally collapse? …
OK then... first Uber, now Lyft. Looks like developing #autonomousvehicles requires deep pockets and patience, something OEMs are accustomed to. https://www-wsj-com.cdn.ampproject.org/ ...
The announcement comes just a few months after Lyft rival Uber sold its own self-driving unit to Aurora, backed by firms including Hyundai and Amazon. https://www.cnbc.com/...
Who (except for all of the people who got mocked as Luddites for saying autonomous cars are still a long way off) could have seen this coming?!?!?! https://twitter.com/...
We have exciting news! @LyftLevel5 will be acquired by @WovenPlanet_GL, a subsidiary of @Toyota, to accelerate AV innovation and create mobility solutions for the future. https://investor.lyft.com/...
Lyft in 2017: A majority of our trips will be in self-driving cars by 2021 Lyft in 2021: Please buy our self-driving car division https://twitter.com/...
Has there been a “demos well but doesn't work in practice” technology that has distracted more companies than self driving cars? The idea that Uber & Lyft thought they could replace drivers with AVs in a few years seems hilariously naive in hindsight. https://techcrunch.com/...
Lyft is selling its self-driving car business to a Toyota subsidiary for $550 million. (Uber sold its self-driving unit last year) https://www.cnbc.com/...