Toyota Motor plans to make self-driving vehicles by 2020 to compete with...

Toyota Motor plans to make self-driving vehicles by 2020 to compete with Silicon Valley rivals

1927
0
SHARE

Toyota Motor Corp (NYSE:TM) is looking forward to make few of its vehicles completely capable of self-driving by 2020 in order to compete with the Silicon Valley competitors such as Google Inc.

The company used the ‘automated driving’ term to explain its new system that enable cars to get on and off the roads and changes lanes itself. That was an alteration from its previous strategy, under which it use to call these kind of technologies as ‘advanced driver support’.

However, an engineer who worked in the development of the technology, Masahiro Iwasaki said the company is afraid that by making use of the automated driving term, customers would misinterpret that humans are not involved in any way. He added TM’s objective remains unchanged i.e. to improve mobility and decrease accidents.

The strategy of the search engine giant, Google to develop self-driving vehicles and aggressively marketing its technology left TM out of the spotlight and built a perception that Silicon Valley is ahead. Though, executives at the world’s largest auto maker by unit sales don’t agree with the impression and say Toyota has been working on autonomous driving for 20 years—even before the existence of Google.

The company’s chief safety executive, Moritaka Yoshida said Toyota has spent a long period to build the technology. The company has advantages and it wants to sustain them as it push forward, Yoshida added.

Few days ago, TM commenced selling cars with a device that has the ability to communicate with other vehicles or traffic lights. The feature will enable smoother lane-control driving while the vehicle is traveling on a highway and alert drivers about the location of other vehicles. The company also plans to launch the technology, named ITS Connect, in the modified version of Prius that will be made available for purchase later in 2015, according to WSJ citing a source close to the matter.

 

SHARE
Previous articleConstellation Brands quarterly earnings beat estimates amid strong beer sales
Next articleAlibaba Group Holding opens its second data center in the United States
I handle much of news coverage for tech stocks, and occasionally cover companies in different sectors. In the past, I've written for other financial sites and published independent investment research, primarily on tech companies. I have a B.A. in Economics from Columbia University. I'm based out of San Diego, but grew up in Southern New Jersey. I play basketball and tennis in my spare time, am a long-time (and long-suffering) fan of Philadelphia's sports teams, and alternate daily between using an iPad Air, a Galaxy Note 3, and one or two Windows PCs.

NO COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY