Toyota & Pony.ai to Form Joint Venture to Advance Mass Production of Autonomous Vehicles

Toyota and Pony.ai, a leading global autonomous driving company, have announced that they will form a joint venture (JV) to advance the future mass production and large-scale deployment of fully driverless robotaxis. GAC Toyota Motor Co., Ltd. (GTMC) is also part of the planned JV.

It will be established in 2023, with an estimated investment of more than USD 139.2 million.

The JV combines Pony.ai's world-class autonomous driving technology and robotaxi operations experience, Toyota’s highly regarded vehicle technologies, and GTMC's advanced production experience. 

The joint venture will deepen the long-time collaboration between Pony.ai and Toyota. I

In April 2023, the Toyota Sienna Autono-MaaS (S-AM) vehicle equipped with Pony.ai's sixth generation autonomous driving software and hardware system started public road testing in both Beijing and Guangzhou.

Among its self-owned fleets, Pony.ai currently has a combined fleet of around 200 Toyota and Lexus brand robotaxis, located in all four of China’s Tier-1 cities (Guangzhou, Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) for road tests and public-facing robotaxi operations.

In a press statement, Pony.ai says: 'The vehicles will be equipped with Pony.ai’s advanced autonomous driving technology and will run on Pony.ai’s robotaxi network platform, PonyPilot+. The parties’ joint efforts will deliver safe and convenient robotaxi services for riders'.

To date, Pony.ai has driven over 24 million autonomous testing and operation kilometers (nearly 15 million miles) on open roads worldwide.