Toyota Motor Corp reduced its share in Uber Technologies by roughly half after the ride-hailing giant unloaded the autonomous driving unit at the heart of their relationship,
“The development of vehicles related to automated driving was one of the main objectives of Toyota’s investment,” Toyota spokesperson Shiori Hashimoto said in a statement, adding that the company still aims to maintain their alliance.
The world’s largest car maker by volume held 10.25 million shares of Uber a year ago. However, according to a regulatory filing revealed today, Toyota now owns 5.13 million shares as of March 31.
Toyota invested $500 million in Uber back in 2018 to work together on creating self driving cars.As both businesses aimed to catch up to rivals in the fiercely competitive autonomous driving industry.
The current amount of the automaker’s investment in Uber is 22.4 billion yen ($165.51 million).
However, under criticism after one of its test vehicles was involved in a deadly accident, Uber sold its autonomous driving division to Aurora Innovation Inc. in 2020. Interestingly, Uber took a stake in Aurora, so it’s not fully out of the autonomous driving sector.
Back in March, Aurora and Toyota had begun testing an autonomous ride-hailing fleet in Texas with two safety operators and no passengers on board.
