Waymo, Toyota Announce Partnership aimed at ‘Advancing Autonomous Driving’
Earlier this week, Waymo and Toyota jointly put out an announcement in which the two companies detail a “strategic partnership” forged in the name of “advancing autonomous vehicle deployment.” The companies described the partnership as “built on a shared vision of improving road safety and delivering increased mobility for all.”
Notably, Waymo and Toyota are focused on “personally-owned” autonomous vehicles.
“Toyota has long advanced research and development in support of a zero-traffic-accident vision, guided by a three-pillar approach that integrates people, vehicles, and traffic infrastructure,” the Japanese automaker said of its work in a statement included in the announcement. “Automated driving and advanced safety technologies play a central role, exemplified by the development and global deployment of Toyota Safety Sense (TSS)—a proprietary suite of advanced safety technologies. TSS reflects Toyota’s belief that technologies have the greatest impact when they are made widely accessible. Through this new collaboration, the companies aim to further accelerate the development and adoption of driver assistance and automated driving technologies for POVs, with a continued focus on safety and peace of mind.”
For its part, the Alphabet-backed Waymo said in part it is “building a generalizable driver that can be applied to a variety of vehicle platforms and businesses over time,” adding the joint venture with Toyota will “begin to incorporate aspects of its technology for personally owned vehicles.” Moreover, co-chief executive officer Tekedra Mawakana said in a statement for the announcement Waymo aspires to be “the world’s most trusted driver” and noted the decision to work with Toyota is a manifestation of shared values—particularly towards the ideal of “expanding accessible transportation.”
From an accessibility perspective, what captivated me to cover this Waymo × Toyota news is the concept of personally-owned autonomous vehicles. As I’ve noted many times before, I’ve covered Waymo at extremely close range over the last few years and have been a Waymo One user here in San Francisco before the app became publicly available. As someone whose vision is so impaired it precludes me from obtaining a driver’s license, the advent of Waymo has been a life-changing revolution of the first order. As much as I’m a proponent of richly-funded public transit systems, Waymo’s presence here in the city means I needn’t navigate crowded busses or deal with overly chatty Uber and Lyft drivers. More pointedly, I needn’t have to lay myself at the mercy of family and friends to effectively be my personal chauffeur. By contrast, Waymo allows me to move about town with agency and autonomy because a car is just a few taps away on my iPhone. What’s more, the nerd in me adores the technological advancements that make Waymo possible—down to ostensibly minor amenities such as the door unlocking automatically when someone approaches the waiting vehicle.
Technical wares aside, what really and truly endears Waymo to me is the accessibility of it. Waymo makes transport more accessible to me. It affords me opportunities to assert my independence as a person with disabilities. It’s something I’ve written about before, on numerous occasions in fact, but which are always worth repeating. Waymo, and its ilk, aren’t beyond reproach; there’s always room for improvement. The salient point is simply the advent of fully autonomous vehicles has been a revelation for myself and others in the Blind and low vision community. It’s neither trivial nor can be overstated.
Of course, I don’t own the Jaguar SUVs I ride around in with Waymo. If I’m praising Waymo for its accessibility prowess, its zenith—the mountaintop—would be personally-owned vehicles. Obviously, this wouldn’t be Waymo proper; to the conceit of the Toyota partnership, it would be even more life-altering to buy a car based on Waymo’s technologies. I wouldn’t need Waymo at all because I have one of my very own. The economics, not to mention the legal logistics, of a Blind person buying a car surely need deep consideration. A lot of the conversations that need to happen will force legislators to confront the systemic ableism around Blind people and “driving” because autonomous vehicles are decidedly just that: autonomous. For the purpose of this piece, however, my focus is on the practical ramifications. To wit, if Waymo today affords me agency and autonomy in transport, having my own car tomorrow sends that concept into the stratosphere. I’ll turn 44 come September, so I may well be into my senior years by the time so-called “POVs” become feasible. I’ve long since made my peace with neither having the ability to get a license nor buy a car—but I still dream of it.
Waymo and Toyota want to turn my dream, and that of others like me, into a reality.
