Toyota and Waymo want to cooperate.DragonImages – Fotolia.com
Toyota Motor Corporation and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development of autonomous driving technologies. The companies aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform.
In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs). The scope of the collaboration will continue to evolve through ongoing discussions. Woven by Toyota, the corporation's mobility technology subsidiary, will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota's strategic enabler.
Waymo will also cooperate with Chinese car manufacturer
A Waymo One vehicle serving riders in Los Angeles.Waymo
Robotaxis are another important business field for Waymo - with enormous scaling potential! Waymo's driverless robotaxis are already operating in several US cities and now make more than 250,000 paid trips with passengers per week. Currently, Waymo mainly uses converted electric cars from Jaguar. They do have a steering wheel and pedals, but the driver's seat remains empty. For the next robotaxi generation, Waymo plans to use vehicles from the Chinese brand Zeekr - but with its own electronics.
Musk vs. Google
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With Waymo technology in private vehicles, the Google sister company would compete more directly with Tesla. Tesla boss Elon Musk claims that most newer vehicles of his company already have everything necessary on board to be on the road as self-driving cars with the appropriate software. He therefore predicts a market share of over 90 percent for Tesla in the robotaxi market. Time will tell...
Experts and competitors certainly doubt this. Musk wants to rely solely on cameras, while Waymo and other robotaxi developers additionally use, among other things, laser radars that scan the environment. There are concerns that the cameras might capture too little information for reliable autonomous driving. Musk dismisses this and plans to launch a robotaxi service in June with initially ten to 20 vehicles in Austin, Texas.
Amazon is also forging robotaxi plans
Amazon is also involved in this business segment with its robotaxi company Zoox, which wants to bring a vehicle without a steering wheel and pedals with space for four passengers to the streets of Las Vegas and San Francisco.
Zoox also uses laser radars. Musk said months ago that there were talks with a major manufacturer about a licence for Tesla's ‘Autopilot’ assistance system, but there have been no announcements to date.
