Lyft, the ridesharing app, recently raised $600 million in venture funding with participation from Jaguar Land Rover, via its mobility services unit InMotion.
That news comes from TechCrunch, which reported InMotion invested $25 million in the funding round. In addition to investing, Jaguar Land Rover is giving Lyft drivers a fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles and plans to work with the startup to test self-driving cars. Other collaborators with Lyft include Waymon and nuTonomy, noted the report. In addition to investing in Lyft, TechCrunch reported Jaguar Land Rover is joining the Open Platform operated by Lyft for autonomous cars.
The report noted that Lyft’s ability to quickly add partners from the automotive industry, particularly focused on self-driving cars, may be due to the problems at rival carsharing app, Uber, which most recently includes growing call for Travis Kalanick, the company’s CEO, to step down from the helm. With reported sexual harassment, discrimination, unprofessional behavior and bullying among its employees, it should come as no surprise that there are talks of the company’s board mulling over Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s possible temporary leave of absence.
The ridesharing company’s board met Sunday to explore making overall changes to its corporate policy management structure, which will occur while Kalanick is on leave. There’s also rumors that Kalanick will return either in another position altogether or stay on as CEO with fewer responsibilities.
What’s more, Lyft has openly said it wants to partner on self-driving technology rather than go it alone like Uber. TechCrunch noted the fleet portion of the deal with Jaguar Land Rover implies the partnership could include more strategic cooperation on services. Lyft has been a long-time partner with GM but is expanding the number of deals it has with other car makers.