Magna partners to develop self-driving systems

Automotive parts supplier Magna International Inc. is partnering with Lyft, one of North America’s fastest growing rideshare companies, to jointly fund, develop, and manufacture self-driving systems.

In addition to the multi-year collaboration, Magna will invest $200 million in Lyft equity.

In a statement, Aurora, Ont.-based Magna described the partnership as an “industry-first” that positions the two companies 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.

“There is a new mobility landscape emerging and partnerships like this put us at the forefront of this change,” said Swamy Kotagiri, Magna’s chief technology officer. “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.”

According to the terms of the partnership, Lyft will lead the co-development of the self-driving system at its self-driving engineering centre in Palo Alto, California. Magna will lead manufacturing and join Lyft’s development team onsite; the two companies will share jointly created IP.

“This scalable technology is expected to be market-ready over the next few years and can be deployed across the industry through Magna,” the statement said.