Latest news with #NihonKotsu
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Waymo Driverless Cars Head To Tokyo — With Drivers
A Waymo car drives along a street on March 01, 2023 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin ...) Waymo's driverless cars are headed to Tokyo to chalk up their first kilometers on international roads — but it's all about data collection, rather than driverless trips. The 25 Jaguar I-PACE electric cars will feature Waymo One technology, but will be driver operated in order to let the Alphabet-owned company map Tokyo and better understand local roads, infrastructure, and driving habits. "It's important for us to understand the difference in driving environment, what makes the driving here unique," said Nicole Gavel, Waymo's head of business development and strategic partnerships, at an event in Tokyo, according to Reuters. In a post on Waymo said the Tokyo trips across seven wards of the city would mark the system's first kilometers on international roads, though the cars will be manually driven with Waymo technology on board — sort of like how the project first started in San Francisco back in 2009. The international road trip highlights how much work is still needed to make a driverless car trained in one city work in another, a "generalizability" challenge that Waymo is trying to understand by sending vehicles across different US cities this year. Tokyo, Japan will naturally be a bigger leap from San Francisco than closer-to-home expansions to LA or Austin; Waymo said recently that it was now providing 200,000 autonomous taxi rides each week, without a safety driver present at the wheel. That said, Waymo hopes that once the mapping phase is complete, the autonomous driving system can take over, though still with a test driver at the wheel. Gavel couldn't say how long the initial phase would last. "We're just starting with the testing so that's where we're focused," she said. 'Longer term, obviously, we would love to have a business here in Tokyo.' A Waymo autonomous self-driving Jaguar taxi is stopped at a light while driving along a street on ... More March 14, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. Beginning today, Waymo One is offering robotaxi services in a 63-square mile area of greater Los Angeles including Santa Monica, Venice and downtown with over 50,000 people on the wait list. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company. (Photo by) She added in a statement that the project would be following the same pattern as American tests, with a "commitment to safety, dedication to earning trust in communities where we operate, and collaboration with local officials and community groups here in Tokyo." Waymo first announced the Japanese trips late last year, and has been working for months with local taxi firm Nihon Kotsu and mobility app maker Go. "Our partner, Nihon Kotsu, Tokyo's largest taxi company, will oversee the management and servicing of the Waymo vehicles," Waymo said in a blog post last year. 'The companies are working closely together to train Nihon Kotsu's team on operating vehicles equipped with Waymo's autonomous driving system. Initially, Nihon Kotsu drivers will operate the vehicles manually to map key areas of the Japanese capital, including Minato, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Chiyoda, Chūō, Shinagawa, and Kōtō.' Beyond private partners, the project has also required working with government and first responders, too. "We are engaging with Japanese policymakers, regulators, and local safety officials to ensure a responsible and seamless implementation of Waymo's technology to Tokyo's streets," the blog post added. Earlier this year, Waymo added 10 new cities including San Diego, Las Vegas and Washington DC, to its lineup of locations for driverless car testing, though as with Tokyo they won't be offering commercial services but will be test rides with drivers behind the wheel.
Boston Globe
10-03-2025
- Automotive
- Boston Globe
Japan's Nissan tests driverless vehicles in city streets filled with cars and people
Waymo is going to land in Japan this year. Details haven't been disclosed, but it has a partnership with major cab company Nihon Kotsu, which will oversee and manage their all-electric Jaguar I-PACE sport-utility vehicles, first in the Tokyo area, still with a human cab driver riding along. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up During Nissan's demonstration, the streets were bustling with other cars and pedestrians. The vehicle stayed within the maximum speed limit in the area of 40 kph (25 mph), its destination set with a smartphone app. Advertisement Takeshi Kimura, the Mobility and AI Laboratory engineer at Nissan, insists an automaker is more adept at integrating self-driving technology with the overall workings of a car — simply because it knows cars better. 'How the sensors must be adapted to the car's movements, or to monitor sensors and computers to ensure reliability and safety requires an understanding of the auto system overall,' he said during a recent demonstration that took reporters on a brief ride. Nissan's technology, being tested on its Serena minivan, is still technically at the industry's Level Two because a person sits before a remote-control panel in a separate location outside the vehicle, in this case, at the automaker's headquarters, and is ready to step in if the technology fails. Nissan also has a human sitting in the front passenger seat during the test rides, who can take over the driving, if needed. Unless there is a problem, the people in the remote control room and the passenger seat are doing nothing. Advertisement Nissan plans to have 20 such vehicles moving in the Yokohama area in the next couple of years, with the plan to reach Level Four, which means no human involvement even as backup, by 2029 or 2030. Autonomous vehicles can serve a real need given the nation's shrinking population, including a shortage of drivers. Other companies are working on the technology in Japan, including startups like Tier IV, which is pushing an open source collaboration on autonomous driving technology. So far, Japan has approved the use of so-called Level Four autonomous vehicles in a rural area in Fukui Prefecture, but those look more like golf carts. A Level Four bus is scuttling around a limited area near Tokyo's Haneda airport. But its maximum speed is 12 kmph (7.5 mph). Nissan's autonomous vehicle is a real car, capable of all its mechanical workings and speed levels. Toyota Motor Corp. recently showed its very own 'city' or living area for its workers and partnering startups, near Mount Fuji, being built especially to test various technology, including autonomous driving. Progress has been cautious. University of Tokyo Professor Takeo Igarashi, who specializes in computer and information technology, believes challenges remain because it's human nature to be more alarmed by accidents with driverless vehicles than regular crashes. 'In human driving, the driver takes responsibility. It's so clear. But nobody is driving so you don't know who will take responsibility,' Igarashi told The Associated Press. 'In Japan, the expectation for commercial services is very high. The customer expects perfect quality for any service — restaurants or drivers or anything. This kind of auto-driving is a service form a company, and everybody expects high quality and perfection. Even a small mistake is not acceptable.' Advertisement Nissan says its technology is safe. After all, a human can't be looking at the front, the back and all around at the same time. But the driverless car can, with all its sensors. When a system failure happened during the recent demonstration, the car just came to a stop and all was well. Phil Koopman, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, believes the autonomous vehicle industry is just getting started. The main problem is what's known as 'edge cases,' those rare but dangerous situations that the machine has not yet been taught to respond to. Using autonomous fleets of a significant size for some time is needed for such edge cases to be learned, he said. 'We will see each city require special engineering efforts and the creation of a special remote support center. This will be a city-by-city deployment for many years,' said Koopman. 'There is no magic switch.'
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Will This City See Waymo's First Foreign Launch?
Waymo heads to Tokyo in early 2025 for mapping a number of the city's neighborhoods, ahead of discussions with Tokyo officials regarding the safe use of SAE Level 4 tech in Japan. The robotaxi company has partnered with taxi company Nihon Kotsu for service and upkeep of its cars, with taxi drivers slated to drive Waymo's vehicles in a mapping operation. Waymo has not yet officially committed to launching operations in areas of Tokyo, but is hinting at such plans by calling this mapping step an "expansion into Japan." Waymo's robotaxis are already a common sight in a number of US cities, and will soon be a common sight in Tesla's new hometown. But the robotaxi industry leader has taken a slow and careful approach to launching in new cities, spending many months laying the ground work for an eventual commercial launch for passengers. And so far, Waymo has been content to keep its operations in the US, and particularly in the southwest of the country. Now, Waymo is going on what it calls its first international road trip, and it's headed to the land of the rising sun. Early this year the robotaxi industry leader plans to bring some its autonomous vehicles to Tokyo—easily one of the world's busiest megacities with a population of 41 million in the greater metro area—and one whose geographic boundaries stretch across a wide area. "There, our Driver will learn and adapt to left-hand traffic and new driving nuances associated with operating in one of the world's most densely populated urban environments," the company said a few weeks ago. Is Waymo already planning to launch services in Tokyo? Despite calling this road trip an "expansion into Japan," the robotaxi operator for now will work with Nihon Kotsu taxi drivers behind the wheel of Jaguar I-Pace models to map a number of Tokyo neighborhoods including Shibuya, Shinagawa, Minato, Shinjuku, Kōtō Chiyoda, and Chūō. The data gathered will be used to train the Waymo Driver software in this new environment. Waymo also plans to work with government officials, community groups and local partners to learn how its tech can serve residents of the megapolis. Robotaxi developers have eyed Japan for some time, eager to cater to an aging demographic, but practical tests of SAE Level 4 tech have not translated into a large robotaxi fleet to date despite no shortage of advanced tech concentrated in the country's auto industry. Over the past decade we've certainly seen interest from automakers in launching robotaxi operations, but curiously enough this hasn't resulted in large-scale commercial operations to date. But automakers with advanced autonomous tech on their shelves are still wary of the economics behind robotaxi services, more so than the regulatory hurdles. "We are engaging with Japanese policymakers, regulators, and local safety officials to ensure a responsible and seamless implementation of Waymo's technology to Tokyo's streets," Waymo indicated. Waymo itself has not explicitly committed to launch operations in Tokyo, or parts of the city, just yet, as quite a bit has to happen on the regulatory side before this step. But its work with local partners, including the largest taxi company in the metropolis, follows a pattern we've seen unfold stateside over the past couple of years, with Nihon Kotsu set to service the initial Jaguar I-Pace fleet. Time will tell if Waymo will feel ready to launch operations in Japan in the near term amid some local competition, but it's clear that the company's robotaxi tech is proving to be safe in several big cities. Will 25% of all ride-hailing cars be robotaxis in the US by the year 2030, or will they remain at a lower level of market adoption by that point? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
