Toyota buys self-driving car division from Lyft
Toyota has acquired the "self-driving car" division of Lyft, the VTC specialist and competitor of Uber, for an amount of 550 million dollars.Toyota is taking a big step towards new forms of mo...
15/04/2022
Toyota has acquired the "autonomous car" division of Lyft, the VTC specialist and competitor of Uber, for an amount of 550 million dollars.
Toyota is taking a big step towards new forms of mobility. The manufacturer, which already has teams of researchers and engineers in-house for the development of autonomous driving, has acquired the autonomous car division of Lyft, the VTC specialist, for an amount of 550 million dollars.
Recall that Toyota intends to establish a connected city "smart city" at the foot of Mount Fuji, where autonomous vehicles will circulate.
The 300 engineers and researchers thus integrate the Toyota group, which does a double blow: in addition to having specialists with extensive experience, it makes sure to have a presence in the United States, since the Lyft teams are based in California.
That's not all, since the money invested will also allow Toyota to use Lyft's VTC service, especially when it comes to setting up the first fleets of autonomous taxis. Toyota will then be able to use the American giant's platform and have access to millions of users.
Lately, the great VTC specialists seem to be gradually abandoning the autonomous car activity, which is too expensive and brings in nothing. Uber notably dropped anything that wasn't profitable to focus on Uber Eats.