Toyota is preparing to invest $2.8 billion to develop driverless software. To implement the new plan, Toyota set up a new company in Tokyo with a total of about 1,000 employees, including new employees. Toyota owns 90% of the new company, and Toyota suppliers Denso Corp. and Aisin Seiki each account for 5%.
The new company is called "Toyota Research InsTItute-Advanced Development". On Friday, Toyota appointed Kufner as the CEO of the new company.
According to James Kuffner, in software writing, Toyota needs to find a faster and more reliable method, because developing a driverless car requires a lot of code. Ten years ago, the code for a car might have only tens of thousands of lines, but the number of lines of code for a driverless car would have to be calculated in millions.
The new company leader, Kufner, said in a statement: "The company's mission is to accelerate the speed of software development, improve efficiency, and make research and development in a more destructive form, and enhance the strength of the Toyota Group by recruiting world-class software engineers." It also said that the company will recruit 1,000 programmers as quickly as possible to recruit talent from all over the world.
In an interview with the media, Kufner added that the budget has increased fourfold, which is much larger than the original; now they have a budget of 4 billion US dollars, the goal is to turn Toyota into a new "mobility company" with world-class software technology.
In 2015, Toyota invested $1 billion to set up the Toyota Research InsTItute, a relatively independent department that specializes in driverless, robotic, and AI technologies. Kuffner has been the CTO of the Toyota Research Institute and now has 250 employees. Earlier, Kufner was the head of robotics and cloud computing at Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet.
Kufner explained that for the moment, programmers only solve a certain part of the big problem in isolation, and then spend many years to put the part into a whole, testing with AI and other tools. Toyota will verify the various parts of the software, making the integration smoother, ensuring that the software is powerful enough to fit into cars and trucks and get Toyota to market. Kuffner compared this process with the "Toyota ProducTIon System". In the 1980s, Toyota proposed the "ProducTIon System". If defects are found, it cannot be tolerated and will be solved later. Instead, employees are required to close the production line and solve it quickly. This production method greatly improves product quality and improves efficiency.
Kufner also said that he hopes to develop electric driverless trucks with the new system. At the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he will use the new system to develop more and more complex safety equipment. Toyota has already installed such equipment on the car. , sold in the market.
Last month, Toyota introduced the Lexus LS500 sedan. If the car finds itself about to hit the pedestrian, it will automatically activate the instantaneous steering and braking system to avoid accidents. Kufner said: "Can you develop a car, install highly reliable software, do not crash, and will not cause an accident? This is the overall goal.
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