Toyota's autonomous driving is not far behind and plans to officially put e-Palette into production in 2020

According to foreign media reports, despite being one of the world's largest manufacturing giants, Toyota's performance in the field of autonomous driving still lags behind other competitors.

Among many automakers, GM seems to have become a leading player in the field of autonomous driving, but it is not very clear how big the competitive gap between it and its peers is. In the past few years, Toyota has not ignored the possibility of autonomous driving becoming mainstream in the future.

In 2015, Toyota decided to take a big step and said it would invest billions of dollars in the Toyota Research Institute. Toyota's goal is to promote the development of machine automation and artificial intelligence technology to help Toyota start testing self-driving cars by 2020.

Toyota believes that although some manufacturers seem to be on the verge of achieving Level 4 autonomous driving capabilities, the entire autonomous driving technology market still has few R&D results.

Toyota is currently investing a large number of Lexus brand models to test new autonomous driving software and hardware equipment. Compared with the best peers in the entire industry, Toyota's performance is not outstanding.

Toyota launched the e-Palette concept car this year, a modular "mobile box" with autonomous driving capabilities. Toyota plans to officially put the model into production by 2020.

In June this year, Toyota invested US$1 billion in Grab Holdings, a shared travel company from Southeast Asia.

In July, Toyota announced that it would launch a $500 million cooperation plan with Uber Technology Company, and the two parties will jointly develop driverless cars.

A report from Bloomberg said Toyota's view on autonomous driving is not to really get rid of human drivers. The core of this is that the application of autonomous driving and related technologies can make vehicles safer and more user-friendly. On the other hand, it can also help drivers achieve certain results just by sitting in the driver's seat.

Toyota has a lot of money to invest in the research and development of autonomous driving, and it also has the most patents related to autonomous technology among existing automakers. Toyota has great potential in the field of autonomous driving.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.