U.K. AI startup Wayve makes Japan debut after Nissan partnership
Wayve Technologies, a U.K.-based artificial intelligence startup backed by SoftBank, has tapped Japan as the next location in its global expansion.
On Tuesday, it announced the opening of a test center in Yokohama, making Japan its fourth market after the U.K., U.S. and Germany as it looks to work with major carmakers in developing AI-driven autonomous driving technology.
"The platform we provide can give a safer and more reliable driving performance than any single manufacturer can build on their own,' Chief Executive Officer Alex Kendall said during an interview.
Autonomous driving, or the pursuit of it, is fast becoming a cornerstone of the future of transportation, with big implications for safety, efficiency and accessibility. But true full self-driving — where a vehicle can operate in any environment without human input — is still several years away.
Most systems operate at what's known as Level 2 or Level 3 autonomy, meaning they still require a human driver to monitor the system and take over if needed. The leap to Level 5 has proven elusive, despite the billions of dollars that have been poured into the sector.
Wayve raised a record $1 billion last year in funding from SoftBank as well as Nvidia, Microsoft and Uber.
Earlier this month, Wayve said it was joining forces with Nissan to help build the next generation of its ProPilot driver-assist system, which is slated to hit the road in about two years. It's the first time a mainstream carmaker has agreed to use Wayve's technology in its production cars.
Wayve's competitive edge comes from the amount of data it can collect and the fact that its system is hardware agnostic, Kendall said. "What the automotive industry globally has been challenged by is building the right software,' he said.
Nissan's ProPilot was first introduced in 2016 and assisted with lane centering and keeping a safe distance from vehicles ahead. The second version in 2019 offered hands-off driving on freeways.
Nissan said its latest system will amount to Level 2 when it debuts in the 2027 fiscal year, meaning the vehicle can handle steering and acceleration but the driver must be able to take control at all times.
Stringent regulations are a major hurdle for assisted and autonomous driving in lots of places around the world but also in Japan, where all vehicles for the time being will require human supervision and intervention. Providing remote services also remains a major challenge, Takeshi Kimura from Nissan's Mobility and AI Laboratory said in March.
Nissan aims to roll out an autonomous vehicle ride-share service in 2027 as Japan faces an aging, shrinking population and, as a result, a dearth of taxi drivers.
Wayve's decision to partner with Nissan raised some eyebrows, given the carmaker is in the throes of its worst financial crisis in a quarter century. The Japanese automaker has been searching for new business partners ever since its agreement to combine with Honda under a single holding company collapsed in February.
"I have full confidence in the management team to navigate the challenges they're going through,' Kendall said.
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