General Motors made a rather sizable investment of $500 million into Lyft two years ago, and since then, things have cooled off. Just last December, GM President Dan Ammann hinted that the relationship with Lyft is a complicated one.
Now, Lyft has announced yet another new partner for self-driving cars, and it leaves us thinking the ride-sharing service is working to distance itself even further from GM. On Wednesday, Magna and Lyft announced a new partnership to develop and build self-driving cars.
This partnership may really sour its relationship with GM since Magna described building self-driving cars, which GM has long iterated as a core pillar of its self-driving vehicle program. Much like the original GM investment, Magna and Lyft plan to use the ride-hailing company’s network to deploy autonomous cars.
The multi-year partnership will see Lyft lead the co-development of the self-driving system, while Magna brings its manufacturing expertise to develop joint intellectual property. Magna wants to roll the technology out to market in just a few years. And all of this, once again, sounds like GM is sitting on the sidelines.
“Together with Magna, we will accelerate the introduction of self-driving vehicles by sharing our technology with automotive OEMs worldwide,” said Lyft CEO Logan Green. “This is an entirely new approach that will democratize access to this transformative technology.”
Internally, we have a feeling the Lyft-GM partnership is all but dissolved.
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