Toyota and Waymo will begin testing autonomous bZ4X electric vehicles in Japan in 2027, the companies said on Friday, with deployment in Britain and potentially other markets planned in subsequent years. Toyota will manufacture the 2027 model year vehicles and integrate Waymo’s self driving hardware at its Takaoka plant in Toyota City, on the same line that builds the regular bZ4X.
“We will start with the right hand drive markets in Japan and the UK,” Waymo co-chief executive Dmitri Dolgov said. Waymo is already testing Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in London and in Japan, and plans a London robotaxi service once it receives the necessary permits; a Jaguar pilot in Japan remains planned for 2027 alongside the Toyota testing. Neither company disclosed how many bZ4Xs will be built initially, and Toyota chief technology officer Hiroki Nakajima said initial operations would involve a small number of vehicles.
The arrangement converts the preliminary agreement the two companies signed 18 months ago into a conventional supplier deal, with one difference that matters: the self driving system is fitted during manufacture rather than retrofitted to finished cars. Factory integration is how robotaxi fleets move from hundreds of hand converted vehicles to production volumes, and Toyota described the programme as a milestone for Japan’s first fully autonomous ride hailing service using mainstream, locally manufactured vehicles.
The companies also said they will keep exploring Waymo technology in personally owned Toyota vehicles, and work using operational data from Waymo’s service to improve road safety more broadly. Those elements carry no timelines. The committed part is narrower and more useful: a dated test programme, a named plant, and a right hand drive market sequence.