Toyota invests over £300m into the future of Uber's self-driving cars

Transport giant, Uber is to receive $500m (around £387m) investment from Toyota, in order to further develop its self-driving cars partnership.

The firm said this would involve the ‘mass-production’ of autonomous vehicles that would be deployed on Uber’s ride sharing network.

And despite growing concerns over Uber’s losses (reported on Bdaily last week), the deal still values the transport firm at $72m (around £55m) - supposedly a 15 per cent increase since its last investment in May 2018.

According to both Uber and Toyota, self-driving technology will be integrated into purpose-built Toyota vehicles.

The fleet will be based on Toyota’s Sienna Minivan model with pilot trials said to begin in 2021.

Shigeki Tomoyama, Toyota Motor Corporation’s executive vice president, said: “This agreement and investment marks an important milestone in our transformation to a mobility company as we help provide a path for safe and secure expansion of mobility services like ride-sharing.”

This deal is hoping to strengthen Uber’s relationship with Toyota, despite a recent setback in trialling self-driving cars involving a fatal crash in Tempe, Arizona, in March - a self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian. It soon closed its Arizona operations thereafter.