Toyota to cooperate with Waymo to develop autonomous driving technology

On April 30, Toyota of Japan and Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet of the United States, announced that the two sides have reached a basic agreement on cooperation in the field of autonomous driving. The two sides will cooperate in the development of platforms for autonomous driving vehicles. Waymo is leading in the commercialization of autonomous driving taxi business and will cooperate with Toyota in automotive technology.

Woven by Toyota, a subsidiary of Toyota that develops advanced technology, will also participate in the cooperation. The two sides will cooperate in two areas. First, they will jointly develop a taxi service platform.

In addition to Waymo’s autonomous driving technology, they will also build a design and architecture for vehicle electronic platforms and software that can integrate other companies’ autonomous driving technologies. In addition, Toyota’s vehicles will be introduced into Waymo’s autonomous driving taxi service.

The other is the field of commercially available cars. Toyota’s future commercially available cars will use Waymo’s technology. It is planned to apply it to the next generation of safety technology and also install autonomous driving technology on commercially available cars.

Waymo is a company that was spun off from Google’s autonomous driving department in 2016. Currently, Weymo is in a leading position in the commercialization of autonomous driving taxis centered on the United States. With Waymo’s service, users can call unmanned self-driving cars equipped with sensors and cameras through a mobile phone app and move freely in the city.

In four cities in the United States, including California, self-driving taxi services have begun commercialization. In Japan, Waymo is working with the taxi platform GO and Japan Transportation to collect relevant data, with the goal of implementing self-driving taxi services in Japan.

Currently, self-driving taxis use pure electric vehicles (EVs) from Jaguar Land Rover of the United Kingdom. Waymo plans to expand the range of models through cooperation with automakers to expand the operating area and reduce costs.

Previously, Waymo had installed the system on the high-end pure electric vehicle brand “ZEEKR” of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in China. In 2024, it will also cooperate with Hyundai Motor of South Korea, and in 2019 with Nissan Motor and Renault of France. Toyota vehicles will also be used through this cooperation.

Toyota said that “through this cooperation with Waymo, autonomous driving technology can be promoted globally and take a step towards a zero-accident society.” Waymo commented: “We need global partners like Toyota. We hope to introduce Toyota’s vehicles into our own ride-hailing service and impress users with our autonomous driving technology.”