Chinese startup Pony.ai, Japanese OEM Toyota Motor (China) and GAC Toyota Motor (GTMC) form a joint venture. The goal is to promote the mass production and large-scale deployment of level 4 robotic taxis.
The joint venture company will be established in 2023 and is expected to invest more than 1 billion RMB (approx. 126.5 million euros). GTMC will Pony.ai with battery electric vehicles of the brand Toyota equipped with Toyota’s redundant vehicle systems, which is the basis for Level 4. The vehicles will be equipped with Pony.ai’s advanced autonomous vehicle technology and will be operated on Pony’s robo-taxi network platform, PonyPilot+.
The joint venture will combine Pony.ai’s autonomous driving technology and expertise in robo-taxi operations with Toyota’s vehicle technologies and GTMC’s advanced manufacturing expertise. The companies said it will provide the capacity for scalable robo-taxi services. In this way, the aim is to promote the full commercialization of advanced autonomous mobility and bring the entire industry into a new phase.
The joint venture expands the collaboration between Pony.ai and Toyota. Quit in August 2019 Pony.ai and Toyota to jointly promote the development of autonomous vehicles in China. In September 2019, the two companies joined forces to conduct autonomous driving tests on public roads in China using Toyota’s Lexus RX 450h model and Pony.ai’s autonomous driving system.
In April 2023, the sixth generation of Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS (S-AM) Pony.ai’s autonomous driving software and hardware began public road tests in both Beijing and Guangzhou.
Pony.ai currently has a combined fleet of around 200 Toyota and Lexus robotic taxis in four Chinese cities: Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.