Toyota is set to invest $500 Million into ride-hailing company, Uber, to work on self-driving cars according to Reuters.
"Toyota Motor Corp will invest $500 million in Uber to jointly work on developing self-driving cars, the companies said on Monday [27/082018]," Reuters wrote.
As per competition, both Toyota and Uber are 'widely' lagging behind the competition when it comes to developing self-driving cars. Therefore, this deal is said to be aimed at helping both companies catch up with "rivals in the hotly competitive autonomous driving business".
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Furthermore, it will also breathe life into Uber's self-driving business that was beginning to stagnate in the recent past.
"Since a self-driving Uber SUV killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March, Uber has removed its robot cars from the road, laid off hundreds of test drivers and shuttered operations in Arizona, its autonomous testing hub," Reuters wrote.
The investment will come in at a valuation of $72 Billion. And according to Reuters, this is the same exact valuation at which Alphabet [Google's parent company], made an investment into Uber earlier this year through Waymo - its self-driving unit.
As part of the deal, Uber will combine its "autonomous driving system with Toyota’s Guardian technology". According to Uber, the combined technology will be built into Toyota’s Sienna minivans, to be deployed on Uber’s ride-hailing network starting in 2021.
The companies’ aim is to solve the enormously challenging problem of how to mass produce self-driving cars for shared fleets, including ride-hailing services.
Jeff Miller, Uber’s head of business development for strategic initiatives, said the partnership “really paints the picture of how we envision deploying autonomous technology in the long term.” That includes licensing its autonomous technology to carmakers and enlisting a third party to own and maintain the fleet.
This isn't the first strategic partnership or investment that Uber is striking in its close to a decade lifetime.
Uber has a deal to purchase cars from Volvo, outfit them with Uber’s technology and maintain them. They also have a partnership with Daimler AG (parent company for Mercedes), in which the carmaker proposes to put its own self-driving cars in Uber’s ride-hailing network.