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Jaguar Land Rover gives Lyft $25M and a fleet of cars

Lyft recently raised $600 million in a massive funding round, and now we know that $25 million of that came from Jaguar Land Rover, via its mobility services subsidiary InMotion. The car maker's investment in Lyft goes beyond just funds, however; it's providing Lyft drivers with a fleet of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles as part of the tie-up, and it's also going to work with the ride-hailing tech company on autonomous vehicle testing. This is yet another high-profile partner for Lyft after a spate of recent new collaborators, including Waymo and, just last week, Nutonomy. Now, Jaguar Land Rover is also joining the company's Open Platform for autonomous cars: The collaboration with InMotion will see the Jaguar Land Rover-owned company "develop and test its mobility services, including autonomous vehicles" using Lyft's platform. Lyft's ability to rapidly bring on a lot of partners in the car maker space, specifically around autonomy, may have a lot to do with rival Uber's ongoing problems, which now also include mounting calls for CEO Travis Kalanick to step back, at least temporarily, from his leadership role. Lyft has also been pretty clear about seeking to partner on autonomy, rather than pursue its own tech, which is likewise different from Uber's current approach. Uber, too, has brought automakers to the table around self-driving services and making use of its ride hailing platform for mobility service offerings. Both Uber and Lyft seem interested in being the layer that connects riders and these future services, and for automakers, it means leaving a complex and challenging part of the picture to partners with experience and expertise, rather than having to spin up that part of the tech business themselves. The fleet provision in the deal is also interesting, and suggests the partnership between the two could involve more strategic cooperative service offerings ahead of the advent of commercial self-driving tech. Lyft gaining more ground among automakers beyond longtime partner GM also explains why it was reported that the ride hailing company turned down overtures regarding a potential acquisition by the Detroit-based automaker.Written by Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch.Related Video:

UK car output falls 14% in March, may get worse with no-deal Brexit

LONDON — British car output fell for the 10th month in a row in March, hit by a slowdown in key foreign markets, and the sector stands to suffer a lot more if the country leaves the European Union without a deal, an industry body said on Tuesday. Output tumbled by an annual 14.4 percent to 126,195 cars in March, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said. Exports, which account for nearly four out of every five cars made in Britain, were down by 13.4 percent. The SMMT said analysis it had commissioned predicted output would fall this year to 1.36 million units from 1.52 million in 2018, assuming London can secure a transition deal with the EU. If Britain has to rely instead on World Trade Organization rules for its trade with the bloc, which include import tariffs, output is forecast to fall by around 30 percent to 1.07 million units in 2021, returning to mid-1980s levels, the SMMT said. The forecasts were produced for SMMT by AutoAnalysis, a consultancy. Prime Minister Theresa May has secured a delay to the Brexit deadline until Oct. 31, giving her more time to try to break an impasse in parliament over the terms of Britain's departure from the EU. Foreign minister Jeremy Hunt traveled to Japan earlier this month to try to persuade the Japanese government and Toyota, which has a big presence in Britain, that London was determined to avoid a no-deal Brexit. "Just a few years ago, industry was on track to produce 2 million cars by 2020 — a target now impossible with Britain's reputation as stable and attractive business environment undermined," SMMT chief executive Mike Hawes said. "All parties must find a compromise urgently so we can set about repairing the damage and diverting energy and investment to the technological challenges that will define the future of the global industry." (Reporting by William Schomberg, editing by David Milliken)

Jeep driver nearly gets washed away by fast moving river

Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. For example, you should never attempt to cross a fast-moving river in a bone stock Grand Cherokee no matter how shallow the river looks. Especially if you don't know what you're doing. A video posted recently to the Facebook group Jeep EXPERIENCE, shows an inexperienced jeep driver learning that lesson the hard way. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. The video starts innocently enough, with a group of off-roaders watching one of their friends attempt to ford a shallow looking river. Things quickly go sideways however, when the driver of the silver Grand Cherokee just plunges right in and quickly gets in over his head. The river is moving faster than the driver thinks it is, the driver panics, makes some bad decisions, then the jeep is turned over and swept downstream. Eventually, the jeep is hauled out by a Land Rover after a long comedy of errors that involves one guy losing his trousers to the current and the Cherokee ingesting untold gallons of water. What went wrong here? Well, It's pretty obvious from the video that the Cherokee driver didn't have a clear idea of where he was going or about the condition of the riverbed. He chickened out halfway across the river, and in what appears to be a misguided attempt at turning back, he reverses, digs himself deeper in the riverbed, then turned broadside on into the current. When he changes his mind again and decides to just gun it for the opposite shore, he drives directly into a deep water hazard that would have been obvious to an experienced off-roader. At that point the jeep and the driver were doomed. Hopefully the driver learned a lesson here, and hopefully he didn't pollute that river too much with the jeep's fluids. Related Video: News Source: Jeep EXPERIENCE Weird Car News Jeep Land Rover Driving Safety SUV Off-Road Vehicles Videos river