Waymo and Toyota are preparing to test a fleet of autonomous Toyota bZ4X electric vehicles in Japan starting next year. The joint initiative follows a preliminary agreement signed by the two companies in April 2025 to collaborate on robotaxi development and deployment. Following the initial testing phase in Japan, the partnership plans to expand the autonomous vehicles into the United Kingdom and other international right-hand drive markets.
Toyota will manufacture the bZ4X units designated for the project at its Takaoka plant located in Toyota City within Aichi Prefecture. The factory will serve as the primary site where the automaker assembles the vehicles and installs Waymo's specialized autonomous vehicle hardware directly onto the chassis. By combining Toyota's large-scale vehicle manufacturing with Waymo's established Level 4 self-driving software stack, the companies aim to accelerate the global availability of safety-validated autonomous transportation.
This upcoming deployment builds upon Waymo's prior exploratory work in Tokyo, which included testing Jaguar I-PACE self-driving taxis alongside human drivers from the local Tokyo taxi company Nihon Kotsu Co. Those initial runs were designed to help train and adapt the software to local driving conditions ahead of a planned commercial ride-hailing rollout in the Japanese capital. While an exact timeline for integrating the newly built bZ4X fleet into the active commercial service remains undetermined, the upcoming trials mark a major step forward for international autonomous vehicle expansion.
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