Jaguar Land Rover invest $25m in Lyft

Jaguar Land Rover (NYSE:TTM) announced a $25 million investment in Lyft, to fund the development of self-driving cars.

Lyft, an emerging rival to Uber, will also be supplied a fleet of Jaguar Land Rover vehicles according to the deal.

The investment will come from InMotion Ventures, a unit of Jaguar Land Rover dedicated to the development of autonomous cars and other motor-related technologies.

This comes after InMotion announced an investment into SPLT, the digital carpool business, which collaborates with Lyft to provide non-emergency medical transportation.

This follows record sales in 2016 for JLR, which grew by 16 percent over the course of the year. The progress was attributed in large part to strong demand across China and the U.S markets.

The luxury British car-manufacturer, owned by Tata Steel, enjoyed a robust performance in the fourth quarter, which in turn lifted group full-year revenue by 9 percent to £24 billion, with pre-tax profits totalling £1.6 billion.

The strong demand across these markets was driven by a revival in popularity of its Jaguar brand. Sales of the brand rose 83 percent from the year before, with sales volume hitting around 173,000 cars. Jaguar’s F-Pace model, which retails for £34,730, in particular proved a success.

Meanwhile, taxi-hailing service Uber has continued to attract controversy in recent months following a string of sexual harassment claims against its drivers. In response to the allegations, the company sacked 20 employees following an investigation and upheld over 200 additional claims.

Alongside this, the company has seen the departure of 13 high profile executives since the start of the year, with a series of public relations disasters threatening the company’s growth.

San Francisco-based Lyst currently operates across 300 cities, and is continuing to expand. Back in April, the company was valued at $7.5 billion and has raised a total of $2.61 billion in funding since its conception in June of 2012.