Toyota to Invest $1 Billion in Artificial-Intelligence Firm
Toyota’s investment signals it is accelerating plans to develop “smart” cars
Visitors take pictures of Toyota’s Prius at the 44th Tokyo Motor Show in Tokyo, Nov. 5. Toyota’s planned artificial intelligence research company is the latest sign of the merging paths of Silicon Valley and the automotive sector. PHOTO: REUTERS
TOKYO— Toyota Motor Corp. is pushing back against technology companies that are muscling in on its automotive turf, saying Friday that it would spend at least $1 billion on a Silicon Valley research center to study autonomous driving and robotics.
The move shows that the world’s largest auto maker is shedding some of its caution and accelerating plans to develop “smart” cars. Auto makers are rushing to set up labs in the home of the tech industry as new players such as Google Inc. pour money intoresearch on self-driving technologies.
The Toyota Research Institute will be headed by Gill Pratt, a prominent expert on artificial intelligence who joined Toyota from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency earlier this year. Analysts say the $1 billion commitment, spread out over five years, is one of the biggest investments in Silicon Valley by an auto maker, though it is only a fraction of Toyota’s roughly $46 billion cash hoard.
“This is the first small step that allows us to go beyond automobiles and make use of the Toyota group’s potential by utilizing artificial intelligence,” Toyota President Akio Toyoda said.
Mr. Pratt said that in addition to studying driving technologies, the lab will conduct basic research on robotics for homes, factories and the health-care sector and will work on developing advanced materials that could be used in cars. The initial investment could grow as the research center delves into areas beyond autos, he said.
Mr. Toyoda, who drives race cars in his spare time, has expressed less enthusiasm than executives of some other auto makers and technology companies for fully driverless cars, maintaining that cars should be “fun to drive,” as the company’s advertising slogan puts it. But Toyota recently began road tests of an autonomous driving system called “Highway Teammate,” and the company has said it wants to bring related technologies to market around 2020.
Mr. Pratt said Friday that the new lab would work on technologies that are aimed at aiding human drivers by making cars safer and more accessible, especially to aging consumers—a fast-growing segment of the population in Japan.
He said the research center would also study fully automated driving, an approach that Google has championed. While existing technology can cope with routine conditions, autonomous driving systems still struggle when they encounter out-of-the ordinary situations such as adverse weather or degraded roadways, Mr. Pratt said.
“Almost all the car manufacturers, and Google, have shown the easy part,” he said in an interview. “Now it’s time to do the hard part.”
Many of the major U.S., European and Japanese auto makers, along with some parts suppliers, already have Silicon Valley research outposts to study autonomous driving and other advanced technologies. They are keeping a wary eye on developments at Google, Apple Inc., Uber Technologies Inc. and other technology companies pushing into the automotive industry.
Auto makers are also concerned that a new generation of consumers is less interested in cars than in smartphones and other gadgets. Car makers are responding by adding more Internet connectivity and other technology features to cars.
“The rapid adoption of advanced technology for the purposes of autonomous driving and connected car services means car companies have to act more like tech startups than traditional auto makers,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book.
The Toyota Research Institute will be based in Palo Alto, Calif., the home of Stanford University, with a branch in Cambridge, Mass., near the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The car maker previously announced research projects in artificial intelligence with those universities.
“What we will do is engage in a whole variety of high-risk, high-reward projects and assume that only a small subset will be successful,” Mr. Pratt said.
