Nagoya Firm Has New Tack To Sell Driverless Tech

In the field of self-driving cars, Japanese companies are being left in the dust of their US rivals, including Waymo LLC of Google operator Alphabet Inc. and General Motors affiliate GM Cruise Holdings, Junichi Kamiyama reported for Asahi Shimbun.

Photo Insert: Tier IV Inc. is contemplating a business plan that offers its software for free, in principle, to encourage more companies to use its self-driving technologies.

However, a Nagoya University startup is throwing its hat in the ring using a unique strategy. Tier IV Inc. is contemplating a business plan that offers its software for free, in principle, to encourage more companies to use its self-driving technologies.

Shinpei Kato, chief technical officer of the company who studied autonomous driving at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, founded the Nagoya-based company.

“The value of software will continue to rise. We want to enhance the system capabilities and increase sales,” Kato said. Tier IV purchased a chassis from automakers to develop an autonomous driving system.

Automakers were brought together in late September for a trial experiment on their self-driving cars along Tokyo’s Aomi waterfront. The vehicles were used for demonstration rides as part of the government-led Strategic Innovation Promotion (SIP) program.

One of the vehicles was a taxi equipped with eight sensors, including high-performance light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors, and a dozen or so cameras to monitor the surrounding environment and remotely supervise the vehicle.

A driver was sitting behind the wheel in case of emergency as the taxi drove for about 30 minutes autonomously. Although at one point the vehicle couldn’t recognize an oncoming car, prompting the driver to take the wheel, the taxi made it to its destination without much difficulty.

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