Just as members of the lithographic services market join forces to develop new technologies, automakers form alliances to share the costs of developing and producing electric vehicles. In some regions, which are large car markets, the authorities aggressively introduce restrictions on the sale of new vehicles equipped with ICE. In fact, it was the "tightening of the screws" by the US administration that prompted the initially conservative Toyota company to accelerate the development of its own electric vehicle. The first model of a vehicle of the appropriate type will be released by Toyota in the Chinese market, and the global version will arrive by 2020, and it can be equipped with traction batteries of a new type.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that in the US market the new president realizes the promise to strengthen the positions of local producers, and importers of cars are not so simple. Toyota, by the way, half of cars sold in the US are manufactured in the same country, but there are no local capacities. This was one of the reasons that prompted Mazda and Toyota to create an alliance in which each of the parties will buy about 5% of the partner's shares. This was recently reported by the Nikkei Asian Review .
Toyota and Mazda will remain independent on most issues, and will continue to sell products through their own dealer networks, but in the US they will have a joint car assembly company capable of producing up to 300,000 cars a year. This will be predominantly popular in the US market crossovers, which Mazda has so far had to import from Japan and Mexico.
Simultaneously, Mazda and Toyota will be able to join forces in the development of electric vehicles and powerplants for them. However, it can hardly be considered that Toyota in this sense was lucky with the partner. More recently, representatives of Mazda have stated that internal combustion engines have not exhausted the optimization potential, and they can achieve not only reduction of harmful emissions, but also increase fuel economy. It sounded almost ultimatum, especially against the background of the desire of most automakers to master the production of electric vehicles.
It can not be ruled out that the "autopilot" will be easier to master "in the fold." At first, Toyota supported the company Tesla and was its shareholder, but now the companies have ceased cooperation. But with NVIDIA, Toyota has established cooperation specifically to create driver assistance systems. For example, the function of automatic braking in front of an obstacle has already become standard for all new Toyota cars in the US market, and for further development of such solutions, the Japanese corporation is betting on the DRIVE PX platform.