Revival focuses on connected trucks
TOKYO - Toyota Motor Corp and Isuzu Motors Ltd announced a capital alliance on Wednesday, reviving a partnership to bolster their competitive edge in connected, commercial vehicles.
Toyota truck unit Hino Motors Ltd will join in the pact to jointly develop small commercial trucks of the future, including connected vehicles and fuel cell technologies, the automakers said.
Connected vehicles can share internet access and data with devices outside the vehicle, making them more efficient.
Under the deal, Toyota will acquire 39 million treasury shares in Isuzu, worth 42.8 billion yen ($F13.6b), taking a 4.6 per cent stake, the automakers said.
Toyota and Isuzu in 2018 dissolved a previous, 12-year capital tie-up that had focused on diesel engines.
The move on Wednesday comes as traditional automakers face growing competition from tech giants and other rivals developing electric and driverless cars.
Toyota Motor president Akio Toyoda said the push for electric vehicles and carbon neutrality gave the companies a reason to get together again.
“We had tried to jointly develop small diesel engines together... but we didn't really identify specific projects much, and we decided to split and find our own ways,” he told a news conference.
TESLA Inc customers can now buy its electric vehicles with bitcoin, its boss, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday, marking a significant step forward for the cryptocurrency's use in commerce.
“You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin,” Mr Musk said on Twitter, adding that the option would be available outside the United States later this year.
The electric-car maker said last month it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin and would soon accept it as a form of payment for cars, in a large stride toward mainstream acceptance that sent bitcoin soaring to a record high of nearly $62,000.
Bitcoin, the world's biggest digital currency, rose more than 4 per cent after Mr Musk's tweet and was last up 3.5 per cent at $56,178.
Mr Musk said bitcoin paid to Tesla would not be converted into traditional currency, but he gave few other details on how the bitcoin payments would be processed. The company was using “internal & open source software”, he said.
Most mainstream companies such as AT&T Inc and Microsoft Corp that allow customers to pay with bitcoin typically use specialist payment processors that convert the cryptocurrency into, say, dollars and send the sum to the company.