Waymo advances Tokyo rollout with Nihon Kotsu partnership

Waymo has held a media briefing in Tokyo to outline progress on its autonomous driving deployment in the city, where the company’s technology is currently being operated by Nihon Kotsu crew members as it adapts to local road conditions. The event, attended by representatives from Waymo, taxi operator Nihon Kotsu and mobility platform GO, follows supervised driving operations that began in April last year across a range of Tokyo road environments.

Waymo’s system has accumulated more than 300 million autonomous kilometres on US public roads, where the company runs a fully driverless ride-hailing service across 10 cities at more than 500,000 trips per week. The company says its Waymo Foundation Model adds a continuous safety validation layer to its end-to-end AI approach before the system acts in real-world conditions.

In a statement, Ichiro Kawanabe, Chairman of GO and Board Director of Nihon Kotsu, said: “Through the partnership between Waymo, Nihon Kotsu and GO, Nihon Kotsu drivers have been operating Waymo vehicles across a diverse range of road environments since April last year. Looking ahead, we are genuinely excited for the day when fully autonomous vehicles begin operating on the streets of Tokyo.”

Saswat Panigrahi, Chief Product Officer at Waymo, added: “Building on a proven safety framework backed by 300 million rider-only kilometres and a 93% improvement in safety performance, we are proud of the steady progress we are making in Japan.”

Source: Waymo