Toyota announced a self-driving car partnership with Aurora and Denso yesterday. The companies will jointly produce driverless vehicles and expect to begin testing a fleet of Toyota Siennas equipped with Aurora’s self-driving technology by the end of this year. While the partnership was broadly described as a “long-term, global, and strategic collaboration,” the companies specifically noted that they plan to deploy the vehicles on ride-sharing networks (e.g. Uber and Lyft).
More context: The partnership comes amid rapidly increasing competition in the self-driving car industry, including large-scale investments from Toyota (the world’s largest automaker), Tesla, Google, GM, and others.
Extra: Aurora separately acquired Uber’s self-driving car unit in December.
The New Paper
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