Making Safe Self-Driving Cars Is Really, Really Difficult, So Lyft Just Sold Its Self-Driving Tech
Full disclosure: I’m a non-active Lyft driver. I was plying the streets of Portland until mid-March of 2020, when the pandemic hit like a viral asteroid and everything just stopped, including my Lyft adventure. Why was I driving Lyft? It covered my car payment, it was fun (you meet some really interesting people at 3:30 a.m.) and because I wanted to see the rideshare business from the inside, as well as track Lyft’s forward motion on autonomous cars. Those self-driving Lyft cars were supposed to be on the road putting me out of business right now.
They aren’t. And they won’t be for a long, long time.
Quick overview of the deal: Lyft sold its autonomous vehicle division to Woven Planet Holdings, a subsidiary of Japanese automaker Toyota, for a little more than half a billion dollars. The deal is... complicated, but keeps the two parties in touch if anyone can crack the autonomous code in the future. Lyft stock popped a bit on the news to $65 per share before it slid back to $62, for a $20.5 billion dollar market cap. Not bad for a company that has yet to make dollar one in profit. Forecasts from two years ago - about when I fired up my fancy LED Lyft sign - had pegged 2021 as the year the rideshare icon would turn cash flow positive. Then: Covid. Buh bye profit forecast, passengers, Lyft drivers - and any hope of self-driving Lyft cars on the road anytime soon. Maybe someday.
-Bill Robertson
(Full article linked below)