JLR partners with Lyft for self-driving cars; invests $25 million in ride-hailing firm

JLR joins several other automobile companies that are partnering with ride-hailing companies in the development of autonomous driving cars today.

Jaguar Land Rover India Ltd (JLRIL) Managing Director Rohit Suri at the launch of new store in New Delhi on June 3, 2017. Photo: IANS

Key highlights:

Jaguar invest $25 million investment in Lyft

JLR will work with Lyft on autonomous-driving technology

General Motors is also a major investor and partner with Lyft

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) on Monday announced that it will invest $25 million (about Rs 160 crore) in Lyft as part of a funding round that closed in April. This development means that the US ride-hailing company that competes with Uber will expand the number of automotive partners it has partnered with. This takes the value of Lyft to $7.5 billion.

JLR also said that it will work with Lyft on autonomous-driving technology and will offer its vehicles for rent to Lyft's drivers, said a Bloomberg report.

JLR is one of the many automobile companies that are increasingly placing bets on the ride-hailing start-ups. Jaguar's parent company Tata Group itself previously invested around $100 million in Uber and formed a financing partnership in India last year.

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General Motors (GM) is also a major investor and partner with Lyft and has also started working with Uber last year on car sharing.

A month ago Lyft announced that it is working with Alphabet Inc's Waymo. This comes after the parent company of Google sued Uber for stealing its self-driving technology.

Lyft also works with GM on autonomous driving projects and announced last week it has struck an alliance with start-up NuTonomy.

Similarly, automobile companies such as Diamler AG and Volvo Cars have partnership agreements with Uber on autonomous technology.

Uber itself has spent millions on self-driving technology developed in-house and are being tested with customers on public roads.

It seems that with the development of self-driving technology with taxi-hailing players such as Uber and Lyft many automobile companies are looking at it as opportunity to partner with them instead of starting their own development from scratch.

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