Lyft Inc. last month expanded outside the U.S. for the first time by making its ride-hailing app available in Toronto. Today, the startup passed another milestone, announcing the opening of a new autonomous driving lab across the pond in the German city of Munich.

Lyft said in a blog post that the team at the center will initially focus on developing technology for simultaneous localization and mapping. This is a navigational approach wherein an autonomous object, such as a self-driving car, constructs a real-time map of the environment while keeping track of its own position at the same time. Pulling it off efficiently can be difficult.

The reason is that determining an object’s position requires a map to serve as a frame of reference, but it’s necessary to know the location of the object on which the mapping system is installed to make an accurate chart. This creates a sort of chicken-and-egg problem that has to be resolved in real-time as a car navigates traffic. The situation is further complicated by the fact that there’s room for only so much computing hardware in a vehicle.

The team at Lyft’s new Munich hub will have their work cut out for them. The ride-hailing startup presumably chose the German city for the expansion since it’s home to several major companies including BMW AG and Siemens AG, which should translate into a sizable talent pool to draw upon.

Lyft’s expansion may have a more strategic dimension to it, too. Rival Uber Technologies Inc. maintains a fairly limited presence in Germany because of strict local regulations and an unfavorable 2015 court ruling, which could create an expansion opportunity for Lyft.

The latter company has already shown signs of being interested in the European market. A few months ago, it was reported that Lyft executives had held talks with municipal officials from London, a city where Uber is banned. Lyft would likely have no trouble finding the resources for an overseas expansion given that it raised $1 billion from Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG venture capital arm in October.  

Image: Spur/Flickr