In a statement, Toyota and the Chinese electric automaker said they would develop sedans and sport utility vehicles, which would be sold under the Toyota brand in China before 2025.
Earlier in the week, Toyota announced it was partnering with China’s Contemporary Amerex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) to supply and develop batteries for lower-emission vehicles.
In a related development, BMW and Chinese online gaming giant Tencent Holdings are teaming up to launch a computing centre in China that will help develop self-driving cars in the world’s biggest auto market.
The computing centre, which will start operations by the end of the year, will provide cars with data-crunching capabilities to help them drive semi-autonomously and, eventually, autonomously.
The two companies did not disclose the investment in the centre. Sources familiar with the deal said the center will be built in the eastern city of Tianjin.
BMW said the new computing center will leverage Tencent’s cloud computing and big data, and provide the automaker with infrastructure needed to develop the autonomous cars.
The Munich-headquartered automaker says it will likely introduce semi-autonomous, or L3 classification, cars in China in 2021 which would need massive computing power to analyze real-time flow of digital information on road and traffic conditions.
Driverless cars need sophisticated data-crunching capabilities as they rely on so-called artificial-intelligence, or neuro-network technology, to help them “learn” from experience and could eventually drive themselves without human intervention.
BMW’s planned Chinese computing center follows the opening earlier this year of a similar computing centre in Munich.
