There's plenty of buzz around autonomous vehicles with Toyota, Uber, and Amazon already involved in research and development of the technology. Now the companies will be taking things a step further, as Toyota has announced partnerships with these firms for developing delivery vehicles.
At CES 2018 in Las Vegas, Toyota showed off a concept vehicle capable of delivering packages, and revealed an impressive list of partners for its plan to develop fully autonomous electric delivery vehicles. In addition to the firms mentioned before, Pizza Hut, Mazda Motor Corp. and Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing are also among Toyota's partners.
The pilot program for the concept vehicle called "e-Palette" is expected to begin during the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. Toyota and its partners are said to create an open platform for mobility services that companies can use as per their requirements.
Many companies such as Intel and Amazon have already announced plans for their autonomous delivery vehicles and some of them are already preparing for trial runs, so it should come as no surprise that one of the largest automakers in the world is also preparing to launch its own fleet of delivery vehicles. It will be interesting to see how Toyota's plans work out by the Olympics.
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