Toyota taps Amazon for driverless vehicle alliance
Toyota, trying to transform itself into a leader of the new driverless economy, unveiled both the concept vehicle and the big-name partners to make it a reality.
Amazon.com has signed on as a partner for Toyota’s new mobility alliance, which will develop fully autonomous electric vehicles to deliver packages, pizza and people to desired destinations. Also joining the e-commerce giant as partners are Pizza Hut, Uber, Mazda and Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing.
“This announcement marks a major step forward in our evolution toward sustainable mobility, demonstrating our continued expansion beyond traditional cars and trucks to the creation of new values including services for customers,” Akio Toyoda, the automaker’s president, said in a statement Monday.
Toyota’s news comes as major car manufacturers and tech giants gather this week in Las Vegas at CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, to showcase whole suites of products meant to overhaul human mobility. Auto companies from General Motors to Tesla as well as interlopers like Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo are racing to bring fully self-driving cars to market, and the payoff will be massive for the ones who pull it off first. Toyota’s vehicle unveiled at CES, called the e-Palette concept, will come in three sizes and sport open interior layouts with flat floors to allow users to outfit them according to their companies’ needs. The larger vehicles resemble small buses and allow adults to stand up inside. The company suggested they could even be reconfigured as mobile hotel rooms.
“We’re constantly looking for ways to innovate and help improve our logistics operations, and in this partnership with Toyota we’ll collaborate and explore new opportunities to improve the speed and quality of delivery for our customers,” Tim Collins, vice-president of Amazon Logistics, said in a statement.
In the near term, the alliance will focus on developing the batteryelectric e-Palette, which will have an open-source control interface that allows partner companies to install their own automated driving systems instead of Toyota’s. In addition, Toyota will provide an array of services to help e-Palette customers use their vehicles, including leasing and insurance support and fleet management. Users will also have access to its global communications network and a so-called Toyota Big Data Center.
“What’s unique about our system is we offer all the software, all the hardware and all the financial tools you would need to run mobility as a service, soup to nuts,” Toyota spokesperson Brian Lyons said.