Waymo and the alliance will work on passenger and package deliveries in France and Japan. Source: RenaultThe Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has entered into an agreement with Waymo, the autonomous driving arm of Google, to explore self-driving taxis and deliveries in France and Japan.
The agreement will see each company bring together technology strengths as well as work together to research commercial, legal and regulatory issues related to driverless transportation-as-a-service in France and Japan.
The Alliance said the deal is the first step toward a long-term, driverless mobility service in both countries, but may expand to other markets in the future, except China — where the alliance has already invested in Chinese vehicle start-up Alliance Ventures.
Waymo has been testing autonomous vehicle technology for years and has surpassed more than 10 million miles of testing on public roads.
Waymo has accelerated its testing and development of self-driving cars and has started charging for its ride-hailing taxi service as it looks to deploy a complete service by the end of this year. Waymo is now making deals with companies in order to get its self-driving technology in the hands of others by recently signing an agreement with Lyft to deploy 10 Waymo vehicles to its Phoenix fleet in the next few months.
