Japanese Companies Make Massive Investments in US Autonomous Driving Startups as a "Driver Shortage Solution"

NTT Invests in Toyota's US MEI to Increase Autonomous Vehicles and Solve Labor Shortage

Japanese companies such as NTT and Toyota are making significant investments in U.S. autonomous driving technology startups. Their goal is to secure core technologies to apply autonomous driving technology to public transportation vehicles like buses and taxis starting in 2025. Concerns have been raised that maintaining Japan's transportation network will become difficult due to a shortage of public transportation drivers caused by population decline amid deepening low birthrate and aging trends. As a result, companies and the government are accelerating efforts to secure autonomous driving technology.

On the 7th, Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported that NTT is investing 10 billion yen (86.8 billion won) in the U.S. autonomous driving startup May Mobility to participate in the autonomous driving business. In addition, other Japanese companies such as Toyota and Bridgestone are also joining the investment. Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance is also investing capital here to develop insurance exclusively for autonomous vehicles.

The Japanese version of the website of May Mobility, a US company that makes autonomous vehicles. (Photo by May Mobility)

May, which has received large-scale investments from companies, possesses Level 4 autonomous driving technology, which is a stage within Level 5 autonomous driving where no driver is needed in specific locations. It specializes in software that interprets data acquired during driving using artificial intelligence (AI) to make real-time judgments about driving situations. With the advantage of being able to respond immediately to unexpected situations, it has logged over 350,000 driving instances across 12 cities in North America.

Through this investment, NTT will obtain exclusive sales rights in Japan for the autonomous driving system developed by May. From 2025 onwards, vehicles equipped with May’s autonomous driving software and sensors will be provided to local governments and transportation operators. The first to be introduced will be community buses, followed sequentially by taxis and other vehicle types.

The production of vehicles embedded with the software will be handled by Toyota, which has a business partnership with NTT. Prior to commercialization, Toyota will begin demonstration experiments next year using autonomous vehicles based on the minivan "Sienna." NTT and Toyota also plan to seek additional partnerships with other companies.

NTT aims to achieve sales exceeding 100 billion yen (868.2 billion won) after 2030 through this initiative.

This investment is driven by Japan’s chronic social issue of population decline. Due to low birthrates and aging, the shortage of bus and taxi drivers is intensifying, raising the new challenge of how to maintain the public transportation network going forward. Starting next year, overtime restrictions will also be applied to public transportation drivers, which is expected to further exacerbate the labor shortage.

Nikkei stated, "Increasing the number of Level 4 or fully autonomous Level 5 vehicles among autonomous driving technologies will help address the driver shortage." Accordingly, the Japanese government approved Level 4 autonomous driving technology in April of this year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.