Thread by @stekkerauto

“If you were to pick a company whose approach to automotive engineering ran directly counter to the software world’s ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy, then it would have to be Toyota. After all, this is a company whose strategic plans are measured in decades, not months.

But Toyota also can’t ignore the march toward the software-defined car and the extra revenue that will undoubtedly come from having a global fleet of connected, updatable and data-generating vehicles.”

So what is the Toyota strategy? The answer – what else? – is that it will take the same methodical approach to software as does for vehicle development and manufacturing. Toyota says it will “achieve TPS in software”, referring to its famed Toyota Production System

that mandates that production is stopped immediately a problem occurs, to prevent defective vehicles reaching the showrooms.

In terms of roll-out for the first car running #Toyota's #Arene vehicle operating system, Kuffner would only say it was global and would arrive “in the next few years”. Japanese newspaper Nikkei last year reported it would be 2025.

As for revenue, Toyota would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of shifting to a properly monetisable operating system, reckons banking firm UBS. “Among legacy OEMs, we consider GM, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and Hyundai as best placed for the software era”, UBS wrote in a report 🤡

indicating the company could earn between 10% and 20% of its revenue by 2030 from software-enabled services such as semi-automated driving, full robotaxis and connected services.

Toyota’s chief digital officer Kuffner (ex Google robotics): “Toyota actually has the hardest challenge. We have hundreds of hardware variants, not a dozen”
Along with everyone else, Toyota wants to make its software “hardware independent”.

That is, you design one piece of software you can distribute to every new model. “If we do it well, we develop it once and then we can amortise development costs over hundreds of vehicles and millions of customers,” Kuffner said.

As to how Toyota will monetise its software, one clue was seen in recent announcement by Toyota’s Japanese Kinto leasing division that customers for the new Prius would get a discount on the lease if they promised to sign up to software updates.

The idea is that the average age of the leased cars would increase, but would still feel fresh because they would always have the latest software. The Prius isn’t running Arene but the launch does mark the first time Toyota has released a car with updatable safety systems.

“it’s really Mt.Fuji. That’s the size of the barrier we face”
- @james_kuffner, chief digital officer @Toyota

more interesting background stuff on Toyota’s cautious approach to software by @NickGibbs

autocar.co.uk/car-news/busin…