The Days of human driving are numbered as big bucks and partnerships flow in a race for the self driving car

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Big companies are partnering and laying hundreds of millions to billions of dollars to commercialize the self driving car.

GM President Dan Ammann believes transportation will change more in the next five years than it did in the last fifty years.

  • General Motors is investing $500 million and partnering with Lyft
  • Ford is partnering with Google
  • Consortium of German auto makers bought Nokia’s mapping assets
  • Uber partnered with Carnegie Mellon robotics department and hired 50 of them into the company
  • Tesla activated advanced driver assist and plans to technically have self driving cars safer than human driving within two years
  • Toyota will activate data gathering on all of its cars to improve its self driving software by 2020

General Motors Co. will invest $500 million in Lyft Inc., giving the ride-hailing startup a valuation of $5.5 billion and a major ally in the global battle against Uber Technologies Inc.

The investment, part of a $1 billion financing round for Lyft, is the biggest move by an automaker to date when it comes to grappling with the meteoric rise of the ride-hailing industry.

GM and Lyft said they will work together to develop a network of self-driving cars that riders can call up on-demand, a vision of the future shared by the likes of Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick and Google-parent Alphabet Inc. More immediately, America’s largest automaker will offer Lyft drivers vehicles for short-term rent through various hubs in U.S. cities