Skip to footer

Toyota, Volkswagen latest to invest in ride-sharing

Two more industry giants have announced major investments in ride-sharing.

|
Dado Ruvic/Reuters/File
Nokia Maps is seen on a smartphone in front of a displayed logo of Uber in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina (May 8, 2015). Toyota has invested an undisclosed sum in Uber and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the ride-sharing business.

Two more industry giants have announced major investments in ride-sharing.

Following the likes of Apple, BMW, Daimler, General Motors Company [NYSE:GM] and Google, which have all made major investments in ride-sharing in recent years, Toyota and Volkswagen on Tuesday came out with their own announcements regarding a segment that could potentially end the car ownership model for millions of people worldwide.

Toyota has invested an undisclosed sum in Uber and signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the ride-sharing business. The MoU covers several potential areas of collaboration including sharing of R&D as well as a lease program where instead of making payments the vehicle owner can simply offer rides to Uber users.

Uber is also a leader in autonomous driving technology. The company is about to start public road trials of autonomous car prototypes in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and as part of the collaboration with Toyota may share some of its developments. A similar partnership exists between GM, ride-sharing business Lyft and autonomous car development firm Cruise Automation.

Meanwhile, VW has partnered with ride-sharing business Gett (formerly GetTaxi), investing $300 million in the Israeli startup. The German firm says it expects to generate a substantial share of future revenues from mobility services, one of which will be an on-demand autonomous taxi service.

Gett is currently active in 60 cities worldwide including major hubs such as London, Moscow and New York City. It originally started as a taxi hailing business but continues to evolve and now includes delivery and logistics services.

The investment in Gett is part of a new overarching strategy at the troubled German automaker to be announced in the coming week. The strategy will outline VW's future plans up until 2025.

There’s an incredible amount of interest in ride-sharing right now and this is only set to grow as the various services on offer become more popular and continue to pass regulatory hurdles. As mentioned above GM has partnered with Lyft and is reportedly due to start an autonomous taxi service as early as 2017. In addition, Google, which is developing its own autonomous car technology, recently launched its own ride-sharing service Waze Rider, and Apple, which is thought to be developing its own autonomous technology, announced this month it had invested $1 billion in Chinese ride-sharing business Didi Chuxing.

This article first appeared at MotorAuthority.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Toyota, Volkswagen latest to invest in ride-sharing
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2016/0525/Toyota-Volkswagen-latest-to-invest-in-ride-sharing
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe