Lyft has logged more than 100,000 paid autonomous trips on its platform, mostly in Las Vegas through its partnership with Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv.
The company said the deal with Woven Planet is non-exclusive and that it remains committed to existing partners including Google’s Waymo, and is on track to hit a 2023 goal of allowing customers to use its app to hail driverless cars.
Toyota currently offers Level 2 automation with advanced driver assistance technology. The automaker has other self-driving projects and has been working closely with ride hailing companies. It owns a stake in China’s top ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing and Southeast Asia’s Grab and also had a stake in the self-driving unit of Lyft’s larger rival Uber Technologies Inc., but transferred the stake when Uber sold the unit in December to car startup Aurora.
Toyota said in February it would develop and build autonomous minivans for ride-hailing networks with Aurora and longtime supplier partner Denso.
The sale will enable Lyft to become profitable sooner and takes away the burden and risk of developing a costly technology that has yet to enter the mainstream. It will allow Lyft to report third-quarter profit on an adjusted basis of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as long as the company continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, it said.
It will also remove $100 million in annual net operating costs, Lyft said.
Lyft will now focus on what it can do best with autonomous vehicles by offering services such as routing, consumer interface and managing, and maintaining and cleaning partners’ autonomous vehicle fleets, which could mean added revenue, it said.
Lyft allows consumers to book rides in self-driving vehicles in select cities in partnerships with Waymo and Motional. But the company also believes human ride-hail drivers will remain important for the foreseeable future to serve customers during peak demand periods, bad weather, or in areas that self-driving cars are unable to navigate.
Bloomberg contributed to this report.