- toyota has added a $400 million investment to its existing partnership with pony.ai, a chinese autonomous-tech startup.
- pony.ai got its start in 2016 and currently has robotaxi fleets testing and serving customers in california and china.
- toyota earlier joined ford and gm in a consortium with sae international to discuss ways to ensure autonomous vehicles will be safe.
autonomous-vehicle tech startups are a hot commodity in the automotive industry right now, and toyota is the latest manufacturer to put massive amounts of money into one of the startups.
the japanese automaker announced yesterday that it was investing $400 million into pony.ai, a chinese autonomous vehicle tech company. the investment builds on the partnership the two companies formed last summer and will allow for further integration of pony.ai’s technology into toyota’s vehicles.
pony.ai was founded in 2016 in california and has been testing its technology on public roads in the state since 2017. following that testing, it made available a robotaxi fleet in service in guangzhou, china, using modified lexus rx vehicles. hyundai has also partnered with pony.ai, and the two companies together launched botride, which serves the public using hyundai kona autonomous vehicles in california.
in 2017, ford announced a $1 billion investment in argo ai, an autonomous-tech startup. last year, volkswagen revealed that it would be investing $2.6 billion in argo as well, pushing the startup’s valuation to $7 billion at the time.
in 2016, general motors purchased what is now its autonomous driving unit, cruise automation, for $1 billion. honda later partnered with gm which included a $750 million equity stake in cruise.