Toyota Acquires Lyft’s Self-Driving Division for $550 Million
Toyota’s new tech-focused subsidiary, Woven Planet Group, is acquiring Lyft’s self-driving car division — named “Level 5” after the stages of car autonomy — for $550 million in cash. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.
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Woven Planet will pay the first $200 million upfront and the remaining $350 million over the next five years. As part of the acquisition, Lyft also agreed to provide Woven Planet with its system and fleet data, and the two will continue to work together to commercialize self-driving technologies.
Three teams including Woven Planet, the Toyota Research Institute, and the 300 workers acquired from Level 5, will be folded into a single unit of about 1,200 employees, all dedicated to developing what Woven Planet CEO James Kuffner described as “the safest mobility in the world at scale.”
“Bringing Level 5’s world-class engineers and experts into the fold ― as well as additional technology resources ― will allow us to have even greater speed and impact,” Kuffner added. “This deal will be key in weaving together the people, resources, and infrastructure that will help us to transform the world we live in through mobility technologies that can bring about a happier, safer future for us all.”
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Lyft launched its self-driving division in 2017 with a great deal of optimism, but building and commercializing automated cars has proven more difficult and expensive than many expected. By off-loading Level 5, co-founder and president John Zimmer says Lyft will become profitable in Q3 2021, “assuming the transaction closes within the expected timeframe and the COVID recovery continues.”
Toyota has kept busy but also mostly quiet about its own developments in the field of automated driving technology. Its acquisition of Level 5 is just the latest in a long list of investments and deals related to automation, AI, and robotics, but it’s been a long time since the automaker has shown off anything using the technologies it is presumably developing.
Toyota was originally planning to provide self-driving shuttles for Olympic athletes at the Tokyo Olympics before they were delayed by COVID-19. Perhaps we’ll finally get a glimpse at what the world’s biggest automaker has been cooking up if the Olympics manage to take place as intended this summer.
Kurt Verlin was born in France and lives in the United States. Throughout his life he was always told French was the language of romance, but it was English he fell in love with. He likes cats, music, cars, 30 Rock, Formula 1, and pretending to be a race car driver in simulators; but most of all, he just likes to write about it all. See more articles by Kurt.