Toyota, SB bet on future of mobility
TOKYO: Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp and Toyota Motor Corp are betting on a future when consumers and businesses will order up their transportation needs on demand, forming a new venture that will develop and deploy ride-hailing and self-driving car technologies.
“Monet Technologies Inc will initially introduce ride-hailing services for Japanese public agencies and private companies, followed by a roll-out of autonomous vehicles in 2020,’’ the two companies said at a joint briefing in Tokyo yesterday.
“After Japan, Monet will expand globally,’’ they said.
The tech investor conglomerate and Asia’s biggest carmaker are seeking to catch up in an area where US technology and car companies have taken the lead.
It’s the first significant collaboration between SoftBank and Toyota, which have already poured billions of dollars into ridehailing startups.
The Japanese companies are seeking a new avenue to increase their foothold in automated driving and ride-sharing services, which are threatening to disrupt the car and transport markets.
“Toyota doesn’t have the choice to ignore this business,” said Koji Endo, an analyst at SBI Securities. “It has to start the experiment, otherwise somebody else will do it instead.”
SoftBank will own just over 50% of the venture, while Toyota will control the rest. “It will be initially capitalised at two billion yen ($17.5 million), and eventually reach 10 billion yen as needed,’’ they said.
SoftBank and Toyota said they saw the venture providing a variety of services, such as meal-delivery vehicles in which food is prepared on the move, hospital shuttles where on-board medical examinations can be performed, and mobile offices.
“The mobility company is just the first step,” SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said in an on-stage conversation with Toyota president Akio Toyoda. “There will be a second and third and I hope that the connection will deepen going forward.”
The fledgling self-driving industry is led by General Motors Co’s Cruise unit along with Waymo, the autonomous unit of Alphabet Inc’s Google, while companies such as Uber Technologies Inc and Tesla Inc are also pushing deeper into the sector.
Toyota and SoftBank have so far separately made investments in such ventures. Monet won’t develop self-driving cars, but will focus on business applications utilising them.
Son’s Vision Fund is the biggest shareholder in Uber, into which Toyota invested $500 million in August. The two have also backed Southeast Asia ride-hailing service Grab.
While Toyota has been developing its own self-driving technology, SoftBank has taken stakes in GM’s Cruise and Manbang Group, China’s Uber-like truckrental company.
On Wednesday, GM’s Cruise drew its second major investment in a matter of months, with Honda Motor Co committing to spend $2.75 billion to back the company and joining forces to bring autonomous vehicles to market.
The partnership will strengthen GM’s position as one of the front-runners in the packed race to bring self-driving vehicles to market.
Toyoda stressed the auto industry was changing in an era of connected cars, autonomous driving, car-sharing and electric vehicles.
“We want to change,’’ he said. “Autonomous vehicle-based transportation services is a competency that needs to be built from scratch,’’ said Vivek Vaidya, Asia Pacific vice president for
automotive and transport at Frost & Sullivan in Singapore.
“Partnerships are the way to go,” he said. “SoftBank has various strategic investments in e-hailing companies and now they have started expanding in developing new chip specifically for autonomous cars. Toyota may want to benefit from that.”