- Waymo and Toyota have inked a partnership to collaborate on autonomous driving technology.
- The two companies will work on a new autonomous vehicle platform designed for personally owned vehicles.
- This is a switch from Waymo’s previous focus on autonomous cars for ride-hailing services, although the company will still be developing its Waymo One robotaxi fleet.
There’s no shortage of companies promising the impending arrival of self-driving cars, and many currently test their autonomous prototypes on public roads. Amazon subsidiary Zoox, for example, runs modified Toyota Highlander SUVs in cities including Las Vegas and Seattle, while May Mobility has a fleet of Toyota Sienna minivans in Car and Driver‘s hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. But the leader in self-driving technology so far has been Google’s Waymo division, which has now announced the signing of a preliminary agreement to partner with automotive powerhouse Toyota on the development of autonomous driving technology.The two companies said they will work together to create a new autonomous vehicle platform, combining Toyota’s decades of vehicle development know-how and Waymo’s autonomous driving smarts. But while Waymo’s efforts so far have, like many autonomous technology companies, focused on commercial uses, this new partnership will center around “personally owned vehicles.” WaymoThe idea of self-driving cars has largely been centered around ride-hailing services, such as Uber, which had run its own autonomous fleets in cities such as Pittsburgh until a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, in 2018 derailed its plans. Waymo has been among the most successful companies with its ride-hailing pilot programs, operating in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Austin with around 250,000 trips each week in these areas.Waymo claims that over tens of millions of miles traveled in its vehicles, the cars have been involved in 81 percent fewer “injury-causing crashes compared to a human benchmark.” While Waymo says it will continue working on its Waymo One ride-hailing service, it will also now begin to focus on incorporating its technology into personally owned vehicles. Competing with TeslaThe partnership between Toyota and Waymo will help the two companies compete with Tesla. The California-based startup has been the main advocate for developing self-driving technology for personal use, although CEO Elon Musk also has his own visions of a ride-hailing service using the sleek Cybercab revealed last year. Tesla has incorporated its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems into regular production cars including the Model Y SUV and has constantly promised the imminent introduction of Level 5 autonomous driving. The systems currently fitted to its production cars don’t currently operate at full capacity and are considered to be at Level 2 autonomy.It’s unclear how long it will take Toyota and Waymo to develop its autonomous vehicle platform and just what the two companies plan to use it for, but we think the partnership could lead to Waymo technology being directly integrated into Toyota production vehicles later this decade. More on Autonomous CarsCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan.
Source: caranddriver.com
