DETROIT (AP) — A person briefed on the matter says Toyota will invest $500 million in ride-hailing service Uber, and the companies will jointly develop self-driving vehicles.
The person didn’t want to be identified because the official announcement hasn’t been made.
The deal is evidence that Uber no longer wants to go it alone in autonomous cars.
In March, one of the company’s self-driving test vehicles ran down a pedestrian on a dark street in Tempe, Arizona. Authorities determined that the vehicle’s sensors spotted the woman but its automatic-braking function had been disabled in favor of a human backup driver. But Tempe police said the driver was distracted and streaming a television show before the crash.
Uber has since pulled its self-driving cars out of Arizona and suspended testing in other cities.
