Toyota and Aurora are bringing their robotaxi partnership to roads in Texas as the two companies are now launching an Autonomous Ride-Hailing test in the Dallas Fort-Worth area using modified Sienna hybrid minivans. This project is going to be focusing on highways and other high-speed roads, as it is already dealing with challenges like high-speed merges, construction and vehicles stopped on shoulders.
Although this test is very small and these vans that are on the roads are not truly driverless as each vehicle has a behind-the-wheel supervisor and monitor in the passenger seat. These vans will drive autonomously up to 70mph, Aurora did say That they were going to be growing the fleet and expand testing into urbanized areas in the coming months.
Aurora chose Texas because of an abundance of major trucking routes and developing/testing high-priority trips for its Aurora Connect robotaxi platform for rides like Hailing to the Airport. Aurora already bought Uber’s self-driving unit previously to speed up their plans, hoping to plug Connect into Uber and other services. The experiment will help Toyota, Aurora, and Uber compete with rivals that already offer rides to the public.
