Toyota’s Woven Planet Acquires Lyft’s Self-Driving For Millions Of Dollars

…advanced ride-hailing services paired with self-driving vehicles yields high expectations

The latest episode of major acquisition around the world features a division of Lyft and Toyota’s subsidiary automaker, Woven Planet Holdings. The combinations of these autonomous resources portray the expansion of electric vehicles paired with self-driving functions — advanced ride-hailing services deployed with driver-assist functions to yields high expectations.

It is worth noting that Lyft worths millions of dollars, yet the ride-hailing company sold its top-level self-driving division for $550 million. Lyft’s acquisition is based on cash and carry transactions, whereby Toyota’s Woven Planet Holdings issued an upfront payment of $200 million in cash.

Meanwhile, their deal requires Toyota to complete the rest of the payment in the space of five years. This deal is expected to push Lyft towards attaining financial growth — up to $100 million non-GAAP annual expenses will be saved, according to the ride-hailing company’s report.

Toyota issued a lucrative deal with Lyft which intertwines generating profit for both parties. Lyft’s acquisition permits the Japanese automaker to access data derived from its ride-hailing services to support any futuristic commercial business Toyota’s Woven Planet is likely to launch.

Toyota’s Woven Planet ends Lyft four-year campaign towards developing its in-house self-driving technology with its ride-hailing resources — afterward, the acquisition deal is sealed, Toyota will continue to “develop and deploy” Lyft’s self-driving vehicles. The deal should close by the third quarter of 2021.

The latest inch of Lyft’s financial development is closely similar to Uber’s AV Project that was acquired by a start-up driver-assist company, Aurora. Uber intended to limit unnecessary expenses — Lyft can also relate to this ideology whereby Toyota handles its self-driving division.

Although Lyft’s self-driving division administered a small-scaled project that is lucrative as well in contrast to Uber, its rival that has reportedly killed a pedestrian — a tragedy of driver-assist technology gone wrong. Nonetheless, Lyft’s self-driving division was initially supported by the Hyundai Aptiv Joint venture — this requires a pilot to autonomously oversee the trips to ensure customer safety, while the project turns out a success.

After Lyft launched its level 5 division in 2017 with high expectations that they would represent dominance in the taxi industry by 2021. They also hired thousands of engineers to bolster their facility stationed in California. Relentlessly they reportedly acquired a UK-based startup Blue Vision Labs with $72 million for the sole purpose of attaining development.

Toyota on the other hand has stealthily developed its AV Project. Although, the Japanese automaker has reportedly revealed test results of autonomous vehicles and in-depth details about the type of sensors equipped in its vehicles — none of these vehicles have been operational. Woven Planet’s parent company was expected to release infinite taxi services in Tokyo to support the unwitnessed Olympics that was stalled by the 2020 pandemic.

Nonetheless, Toyota has developed a driver assist software they dubbed “Guardian” — similarly to Tesla’s autopilot driver-assist software. The Guardian was initially called “Chauffeur” the same name Google dubbed its driver-assist software.