Autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai is forming a joint venture with Toyota Motor Investment Co. Ltd. and GAC Toyota Motor Co. Ltd. to jointly advance mass production and deployment of a large-scale fully driverless robotaxi network in China.
The JV will be established this year with an investment of about $139.2 million. GAC Toyota will provide battery electric vehicles equipment with Toyota’s redundant systems for Level 4 autonomous driving. The vehicles will be equipped with Pony.ai’s autonomous driving software and will run on its robotaxi network called PonyPilot+.
The collaboration will continue the deals between the two companies that started in 2019 with the joint development of autonomous vehicles in China. The two companies also collaborated on autonomous vehicle testing on public roads in China using Toyota’s Lexus RX 450h model and using Pony.ai’s autonomous driving systems.
Under the new deal, Toyota’s scaled-up robotaxis will be used as a path toward full commercialization of advanced autonomous mobility and later drive development of future driverless technologies and vehicles.
Pony.ai has been actively ramping its driverless robotaxi testing with collaborations with SAIC Motor in China and was one of the first companies approved in Beijing to have autonomous vehicles operate without a safety driver in tow. It then was the first to offer fully driverless robotaxi services in Guangzhou, China.
In total, Pony.ai has a combined fleet of about 200 Toyota and Lexus brand robotaxis located in all four Chinese Tier-1 cities — Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen — where they are road tested and are the public face of the company’s robotaxi services.
