Toyota to invest $500 million in Uber, AP source says
DETROIT—Toyota will sink a half-billion dollars into Uber and work jointly with the ride-hailing giant to develop self-driving vehicles, a person briefed on the matter said Monday.
The deal is a sign that Uber no longer wants to go it alone in creating an autonomous driving system since one of its test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian on a darkened street in Tempe, Arizona, earlier this year.
The deal also will help both the Japanese automaker and Uber spread out the cost of designing and building the complex systems, which use computers, cameras, radar and laser sensors to guide the self-driving vehicles. And it will help them compete against rivals General Motors and Google’s Waymo, which experts say are leading the autonomousrace.
Self-driving vehicles are important to Uber to reduce the cost of carrying passengers. If it fails, rivals with self-driving cars could offer rides at a lower cost.
Further details of the deal were not available, and the person briefed on the matter declined to be identified because an official release hasn’t been issued. The deal was reported earlier Monday by The Wall Street Journal.
Uber has been doing a safety evaluation of its autonomous vehicle program ever since the March 18 crash that killed 49-year-old Elaine Herzberg as she walked a bicycle across the Arizona street.
Navigant Research analyst Sam Abuelsamid suspects that Toyota, which has taken a more cautious approach to autonomous-vehicle development, will take control of the program from Uber. Toyota would benefit from Uber’s technology, because the ride-hailing company was working quickly on the system and may have been ahead of Toyota, Abuelsamid said.
Uber, he said, almost had to take on a partner after the crash. “It’s going to be tough for them to build consumer trust in whatever it is they’re developing. I think that people will have a lot more trust in Toyota to do this the right way, to take due care and make sure everything is properly tested and evaluated,” Abuelsamid said.