Toyota is reportedly considering a large investment in Chinese ride-hail giant Didi.
The Nikkei reported that the company is considering a 60 billion yen (USD550m) investment in Didi Chuxing.
Go deeper with GlobalData
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
The report also said that Toyota is planning to create a new mobility services company in China.
The latest news is another sign that Toyota is looking to ramp-up its presence in future mobility fields, in part a reaction to perceptions that it has for too long been a conservative company lagging behind others in embracing new models for mobility and business.
Last month Toyota, Denso and SoftBank announced they will invest US$1bn billion in Uber Technologies Inc.’s Advanced Technologies Group (Uber ATG). The investment, in a newly formed ATG corporate entity, aims to accelerate the development and commercialisation of automated ridesharing services.
Toyota also invested $500m in Uber in August 2018, when the two companies announced their intention to bring pilot-scale deployments of automated Toyota Sienna-based ride-hail vehicles to the Uber ride-hail network in 2021, leveraging the strengths of Uber ATG’s self-driving technology alongside the Toyota Guardian advanced safety support system.
