• Alphabet-owned Waymo and Toyota on Tuesday announced a preliminary partnership to explore bringing robotaxi tech to personally-owned vehicles.
• Waymo said it will leverage its self-driving car tech with Toyota's expertise for "personally owned vehicles."
• The company's co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the strategic partnership could also result in the Google-owned company incorporating Toyota's "vehicles into our ride-hailing fleet."

-owned Waymo and on Tuesday announced a preliminary partnership to explore bringing robotaxi tech to personally-owned vehicles.

"The companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles," the two companies .

The companies said they aim to use the partnership to more quickly develop driver assistance and autonomous vehicle technologies for personal vehicles. Toyota is the world's automaker by sales. 

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said the strategic partnership could also result in the Google-owned company incorporating Toyota's "vehicles into our ride-hailing fleet."

The Toyota tie-up is the latest automotive partnership for Waymo.

The self-driving company has previously worked with automakers such as Jaguar Land Rover, Stellantis predecessor Fiat Chrysler, Daimler Trucks, Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler, Hyundai Motor and China's . The partnerships, many of which touted long-term tie-ups, largely resulted in automakers producing modified vehicles for testing or for Waymo to use in its fleets.

The partnership with Toyota will not affect Waymo's plans to deploy Hyundai and Geely vehicles through the Waymo One ride-hailing service in the future, a spokesman for the Alphabet-owned company told C온라인카지노사이트.

Waymo is now serving 250,000 paid rides per week, up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in  and expanded in the  in March. Waymo is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai noted in last week that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is "future optionality around personal ownership" of vehicles equipped with Waymo's self-driving technology.

Waymo and Toyota are not the only companies turning their focus to personally-owned autonomous vehicles. When GM  that it was abandoning its Cruise robotaxi business, the company said it would instead focus on the development of autonomous systems for use in personal vehicles.

Toyota previously invested in and partnered with , Elon Musk's automaker which now aims to compete with Waymo on driverless tech. Toyota sold the its stake in the EV maker in June 2017.

Tesla, once seen as a pioneer in self-driving tech, does not yet produce cars that are safe to use without a human driver at the wheel, ready to steer or brake at any time.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, criticized Waymo on a recent earnings call claiming the robotaxis are too expensive for mass-production. Musk also promised Tesla will be "selling fully autonomous rides in June in Austin," using Model Y vehicles with a new "unsupervised" version of the company's "Full Self-Driving" or FSD systems installed.

-- C온라인카지노사이트 reporter Michael Wayland contributed to this report.

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