Toyota banks on mobility technologyAP, TOKYOJapanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp is boosting acquisitions in mobility technology, adding Renovo Motors Inc, a Silicon Valley software developer, to its Woven Planet Holdings team, which is working on automated driving. The addition, announced yesterday, follows the purchase earlier this year of CARMERA Inc, a US venture that specializes in sophisticated road-mapping updates made cheaper and faster by using crowdsourced information obtained from millions of Internet-connected Toyota vehicles. Woven Planet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, earlier acquired San Francisco-based Lyft Inc’s self-driving division Level 5. “The big picture is Woven Planet creating a ‘dream team’ of software and vehicle engineering people globally to deliver the world’s programmable and safest mobility,” Kuffner told reporters. Kuffner declined to comment on an incident at the Paralympics Athletes Village in Tokyo last month, when a Toyota bus equipped with automated driving technology bumped into a Paralympian athlete and injured him.

Source: Taipei Times September 28, 2021 15:56 UTC