Chris Davies - Apr 26, 2021, 3:33pm CDT
Lyft is selling its autonomous vehicle division to Toyota, with the Japanese automaker setting up a new subsidiary, Woven Planet Holdings, to pick up the reins of the self-driving car project. Lyft established Level 5, its driverless division, back in mid-2017, and at the time had no shortage of promises for what autonomy would bring to the ride-hailing service.
The Lyft Open Platform Initiative, the company promised, would develop a combination hardware and software kit around which automakers and others could build their own driverless vehicles. It would combine hardware from established industry suppliers like cameras, radar scanners, and processors, with homegrown software educated by data funneled back from the millions of rides existing human Lyft drivers were already undertaking.