Jaguar Land Rover invests in Lyft

InMotion, Jaguar Land Rover’s mobility services business, has announced a US$25 million investment in Lyft, one of the prominent rideshare company in the U.S.

The investment from Jaguar Land Rover will support Lyft’s expansion and technology plans. It will also provide Jaguar Land Rover’s InMotion Ventures with the opportunity to develop and test its mobility services, including autonomous vehicles, and to supply Lyft drivers with a fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles.

San Francisco-based Lyft operates in 300 cities. It has also partnered with General Motors and Alphabet’s Waymo to research autonomous ride-hailing. The partnership with Waymo was a surprise announcement last week as Waymo is suing Uber over self-driving car technology.

According to Sebastian Peck, Managing Director Inmotion, “Personal mobility and smart transportation is evolving and this new collaborative venture will provide a real-world platform helping us develop our connected and autonomous services.”

Lyft is trying to capitalize on the ongoing problems at Uber which now also include mounting calls for CEO Travis Kalanick to step back by bringing in multiple partners for pursuing autonomy. Uber is also trying to partner with automakers for autonomous vehicles. Both these ridesharing companies are trying to offer platforms to automakers which helps make their vehicles autonomous and connect them with users.