Follow｜Traditional car companies storm autonomous driving, Toyota acquires US map and road data company

text: understand the car emperor original Xing Qiuhong

[understand the car emperor original industry] On July 15, Toyota announced that it has acquired Carmera, an American driverless car map and data provider. This marks Toyota's latest investment in self-driving technology. The acquisition was made through Woven Planet, a newly formed subsidiary of Toyota, for an undisclosed price.

In the field of autonomous driving, high-precision maps play a very important role. The acquisition of Carmera will give Toyota access to real-time high-definition maps, which are critical for autonomous vehicles to locate and navigate autonomously, the companies said in a statement.

Since 2018, Toyota and Carmera have been collaborating on a number of projects, including precise updates to lane marking technology on HD maps.

"This is very much in line with our company's global expansion (strategy)," Woven Planet CEO James Kuffner said in an interview.

Kuffner said Over the next decade, he wants to make sure that every new car in Toyota's nearly 10 million annual fleet is optimized to start contributing to this vast map network. Toyota's fleet will be constantly tracking road changes, and as large amounts of data are uploaded to a central map server, this solution can also be used by companies other than Toyota.

At the same time, Carmera plans to develop an open mapping platform and sell it to OEMs and automakers.

The main body of this acquisition is Woven Planet, an autonomous driving company owned by Toyota. In January 2021, Toyota Research Institute Advanced Research and Development (TRI-AD) was officially reorganized into the holding company Woven Planet. Woven Planet consists of three companies: Woven Core, Woven Alpha and Woven Capital.

The three companies have their own priorities: Woven Core is mainly responsible for the development of autonomous driving technology; Woven Alpha explores new business expansion areas and incubates new innovative projects, including Woven City and open software platforms (Arene, automatic map platform AMP); Woven Alpha Capital is an $800 million investment fund focused on growing companies in areas such as autonomous driving, automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, data and analytics, connectivity and smart cities.

Earlier this year, Toyota bought the self-driving technology unit of ride-hailing company Lyft for $550 million and invested in Ridecell, which provides automation for fleet operations.

In addition, Toyota has an autonomous driving partnership with SoftBank and holds stakes in China's Didi and Singapore's Grab, and has formed a business alliance with General Motors , suppliers and chip makers.

For automobile manufacturers, intelligent driving is one of the most important tracks in the future. Experts predict that a wave of consolidation in the industry is coming due to the huge sums required to implement autonomous driving technology.