This New Partnership Could Be the Death of Tesla’s Autopilot Hype… And Nobody Saw It Coming

I’ve got to be honest… if you’d asked me back in January which automaker was dead last in the race toward autonomy, Toyota would’ve been at the top of my list. And not in a good way.

If you’ve ever driven a Toyota, you know exactly what I mean. These cars are built to run forever, but they don’t exactly scream “cutting edge.” Half the dashboard buttons look like they were designed during the Bush administration. Toyota’s whole reputation has been built on one thing: reliability. That’s why your neighbor still drives the same Corolla they took to college. It works, it doesn’t complain, and it’ll probably outlive us all.

But yesterday, Toyota decided to shock everyone. The company announced it’s teaming up with Alphabet-owned Waymo to explore bringing autonomous driving tech to personally-owned vehicles. Yep, the same Waymo that’s been quietly logging over 250,000 driverless rides per week in cities like San Francisco, Phoenix, and Austin.

The two companies are calling it a preliminary partnership, so they’re not married yet, but they’re definitely looking at rings. There’s no product announcement, no prototype, and no pricing yet. Just a shared interest in figuring out how Toyota’s manufacturing scale and Waymo’s self-driving software might fit together. If things go well, the result could be a future where your next Toyota comes with Waymo’s tech baked in.

Now to be fair, Toyota hasn’t been completely asleep at the wheel when it comes to autonomy. They’ve been working on in-house tech for years through a division called Woven (formerly TRI), and in 2023, they $3.3 billion USD in a joint effort with Nippon Telegraph & Telephone to develop AI-driven crash prediction systems. But so far, most of that effort has gone toward improving driver-assist tools, not full autonomy.

And while that’s been happening, Tesla’s out here promising unsupervised robotaxis, BYD is loading up every vehicle with AI, and Nissan’s already partnering with U.K.-based startup Wayve (although they could go belly up any moment). Toyota, despite being the world’s biggest automaker by volume, needed to move faster… and Waymo gives them a shortcut.

On the flip side, Waymo gets something valuable out of this, too. Up until now, they’ve mostly stuck to their own ride-hailing fleet, handling everything from the app to roadside assistance. But with this deal, they get a shot at something they’ve only hinted at until recently: putting their tech into cars that regular people own. During Alphabet’s latest earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said there's “future optionality” around personal ownership. This looks like the first serious step in that direction.

There’s also a business case to be made. Licensing Waymo’s system to consumers as a subscription service (something like “Full Self-Driving, but actually autonomous”) could create a whole new revenue stream. And Toyota, with millions of cars on the road and unmatched production capabilities, could help them scale it in a way that actually works.

Of course, there are tough mountains to climb. Regulatory approval in countries like Japan remains strict (vehicles still require human oversight for now) and consumer trust in self-driving tech isn’t exactly at an all-time high. But this partnership, if it matures, could lay the groundwork for something bigger than just another ride-hailing app.

It’s a smart move for Toyota, and potentially a pivotal one for Waymo. Neither company is committing to anything concrete just yet, but this kind of collaboration doesn’t happen for no reason. It’s a signal that the future of autonomy might not come from a flashy startup or an overpromising EV brand… it might come from the most practical, most boringly dependable carmaker on the planet.

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Stock.News has positions in Tesla and Alphabet.