Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. announced on the start of cooperation with Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. and specializes in autonomous driving technologies. Woven, Toyota’s technology division, also joined the partnership. Together, the parties will work on creating a new platform for autonomous driving and developing the next generation of personal vehicles.
Toyota has long invested in artificial intelligence and autonomous technology, but currently lags behind industry leaders such as Tesla or China’s BYD, which are rapidly developing autopilot systems. The company is trying to make up for lost time, particularly due to delays in the development of its own software platform, Arena, which is being developed by Woven.
These delays were due to management changes that occurred in 2023. To speed up the process, Toyota has agreed to a 500 billion yen (about $3.3 billion) joint investment with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone in 2024 to develop artificial intelligence-based autonomous driving software.
For Waymo, this cooperation opens a new direction of activity — going beyond autonomous taxi services into the segment of private transport. The company currently makes more than 250,000 trips every week in such US cities as Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The appearance in the field of personal cars creates new prospects for Waymo in the international market.
Despite technical progress, one of the main barriers to the introduction of autonomous transport remains legal restrictions. In Japan, as in many countries, there is a requirement for a driver to be at the wheel, who can take control of the car if necessary – even if the vehicle is equipped with autopilot. This significantly slows down the large-scale implementation of such technologies.
