Toyota, Denso and Softbank Invests $1 billion in Uber’s Self-Driving Cars

The Uber Advanced Technologies Group’s self-driving e-hailing service has raised $1 billion from Toyota, Softbank and DENSO to accelerate production of driverless cars. This is shortly after it recently filed for IPO on the New York Stock Exchange to raise $10 billion to expand globally.

Self-driving cars also known as autonomous or driverless cars make use of sensors and software to control, navigate and drive themselves without human input.

These Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicles use remote sensors to observe the environment and control algorithms and determine the direction of movement. The vehicles collect information of maps, detects movement of other vehicles, humans or buildings and even repairs itself without assistance. Automated vehicles are mostly used by the military to perform special duties.

Toyota and DENSO will jointly invest $667 million in the driverless cars. Denso is a global automotive components manufacturing company founded 69 years ago. It manufactures vehicle components, non-automotive components and is currently the second largest auto part supplier in the world. Softbank, on the other hand is a Japanese company that owns stakes in several top industries around the world, including Yahoo, Alibaba Group and Sprint Corporation. It also owns Vision Fund, the world’s largest technology fund. Softbank will provide the remaining $337 million to support the project.

Last year, Toyota invested $500 million to deploy automated Toyota Sienna ridesharing cars with Uber by 2021. Toyota collaborated with Softbank to form MONET (mobility network) in order to foster the production of new artificial intelligence and driverless cars. MONET is a connector between Toyota’s Mobility Services Platform– its Information infrastructure and Softbank’s IoT. It will be used to optimize supply on-demand in transportation, including just-in-time dispatch services in Japan.

Uber is a transport company founded in 2009, that offers ridesharing services, ride-hailing and food delivery services via mobile apps. It started researching on how to develop its own self-driving cars in 2015, and launched its first self-driving car service in 2016, using Ford Fusion cars and Volvo SUVs in California. Last year it stopped the production of driverless trucks after investing $925 million into the development. Since the pilot phase, Uber has faced the challenge of early adoption just like every other new technology. Challenges like accident risks, vehicle hacks, and cost of vehicles. People also question if these autonomous vehicles will replace the jobs of drivers and so forth.

Driverless vehicles have the possibility to ensure safety and decongest traffic. The CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi said that the driverless cars will positively impact the logistics industry for safer cities. There is high hope that the partnership will successfully deploy automated ridesharing services globally.