Why are Toyota and VW investing in the ride-hailing business?

Toyota and Uber plan to develop self-driving cars together. General Motors has already partnered with Lyft. Automotive giants are becoming active partners with emerging transportation tech.

|
Uber/AP
A sedan outfitted with radars, laser scanners and high-resolution cameras drives in Pittsburgh. Uber's partnership with Toyota could bring self-driving cars to the streets sooner.

Toyota and Volkswagen are the latest in a string of auto industry giants to partner with ride-hailing companies, as the future of "mobility services" steers toward less ownership and more self-driving cars.

Toyota and Uber announced a partnership Tuesday in which Toyota, valued at $177 billion, will invest an undisclosed amount to collaborate with Uber to develop autonomous cars. Volkswagon has invested $300 million in Gett, a taxi-hailing service that operates in 60 cities in Israel, Russia, the United States, and Britain, allowing the Israeli startup to expand in Europe, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Tuesday's announcements are the latest in a series of major investments by the automakers to compete with Apple (whose $500 billion value is as much as seven major automakers combined) and Google, as the everyday commute appears poised to undergo a massive transformation. The focus on autonomous cars comes as Tesla, another tech startup, is attempting revolutionize the electric car and battery technology. Both paths of innovation point to a fundamental shift underway as Silicon Valley and Detroit compete to be the transportation companies of tomorrow.

"Somebody outside of the auto industry doing things they were not doing, and doing it in a radical and disruptive way is definitely a factor," Bruce Belzowski, managing director of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute's Automotive Futures group, tells The Christian Science Monitor, referring to the development of autonomous cars and ride-hailing technology. "[Automakers] all have offices in Silicon Valley. They're all trying to make contacts with these companies."

"They want to be involved so they can make better decisions about what they're going to do in the future," adds Mr. Belzowski. "If they're not involved, they can't be part of the game. If they are involved, they can actually shape things and better understand where there is potential for them."

And the size of investments automakers can afford to pour into disruptive tech startups could fundamentally change how – and if – we drive.  

"Ride-sharing has huge potential in terms of shaping the future of mobility," Shigeki Tomoyama, Toyota Motor Corporation's senior manager officer, said in a joint statement Tuesday.

In the statement, Toyota and Uber announced a memorandum of understanding, in which Toyota will offer Uber drivers lease options they can pay off through the money they collect driving. And Gett said VW's investment would allow it to expand in Europe, as it serves VW's corporate partners, Shahar Waiser, Gett’s executive offer, told The Wall Street Journal.

Yet, the most intriguing news to come out of Tuesday's announcements is Toyota and Uber revealing they will collaborate "accelerating their respective research efforts." Uber has invested in self-driving technology, which includes mapping, reported Reuters. Toyota, meanwhile, had planned to spend $1 billion through 2020 in research and development for artificial intelligence and robotics that could be applied to self-driving cars, according to Reuters.

This relationship is a departure from the auto industry's long-established formula for "making bigger and more powerful cars to fuel their growth," writes The New York Times.

"But start-ups like Uber and Lyft and technology companies like Google and Tesla have disrupted that cadence," writes the Times. "Automakers have become increasingly concerned about those technologies and their potential to help people travel easily and cheaply without owning a car – or even without knowing how to drive."

The auto industry's response: If you can't beat them, join them.

General Motors, for instance, invested $500 million in Lyft, Uber's competitor, in January to research to create an on-demand network of autonomous cars. GM and Lyft plan to create a network self-driving cars that users can hail through the Lyft app.

Google and Fiat Chrysler announced their own partnership in early May to develop a self-driving minivan. While Google has created a prototype of a two-seater, autonomous car, it and the automaker are reportedly developing on is a seven-seater minivan.

And Apple invested $1 billion in the Chinese ride-hailing service Didi Chuxing, allowing Apple to diversify beyond its current portfolio, perhaps into the realm of self-driving cars, The Christian Science Monitor's Olivia Lowenberg reported.

It remains to be seen, though, how successful the auto industry can be selling "mobility services" – the industry's buzzword. Their relationship with consumers is almost entirely through dealerships or recalls, says the University of Michigan's Belzowski.

"They have no track record for doing this," he says. "It's a brave new world for them they're trying to understand."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Why are Toyota and VW investing in the ride-hailing business?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2016/0525/Why-are-Toyota-and-VW-investing-in-the-ride-hailing-business
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe