Toyota moves to make more user-friendly cars

Leading global automaker; Toyota is forming a new data science company in partnership with Microsoft that’s designed to free customers “from the tyranny of technology.”

Automakers are expanding connected-car services as the industry heads toward technologies such as autonomous vehicles. Telematics combines computers and wireless technology to provide services such as infotainment and real-time traffic updates to moving vehicles. Toyota and Microsoft have been collaborating in this area since 2011.

The new venture will study everything from cars that help each other analyze traffic patterns to use-based insurance pricing to connecting drivers with information and security services in their homes. The effort comes amid a broader push by the world’s largest automaker to accelerate its research into artificial intelligence and robotics.

The company called Toyota Connected has a goal of simplifying technology so it’s easier to use, perhaps even getting rid of distracting and complicated touch screens that now are in most cars and replacing them with heads-up or voice-activated technology, said Zack Hicks, the company’s CEO who also is Toyota Motor America’s chief information officer.

“I think people are really tired of fumbling with multiple devices and having this disjointed experience,” Hicks said as Toyota announced the venture penultimate Monday.

Like other carmakers, Toyota Connected will research connecting cars to each other and to homes, as well as telematics features that learn and anticipate a driver’s habits.

The company will also explore transmitting a driver’s health data to a doctor or driving patterns to an insurance company so people are insured based on where they travel, Toyota said.

Also, it will look at linking with other vehicles so they can report weather and traffic conditions to people driving the same route.

Toyota says the new company will support research into artificial intelligence and robots, as well as analyse data from vehicle sensors and cameras so algorithms can be developed for self-driving cars. Drivers would have to opt in to all of the data reporting, and Toyota would disclose what data is being shared, the company said.

Microsoft engineers will work with the company at its headquarters in Plano, Texas, where Toyota is moving its US operations. Microsoft bought a 5 percent equity stake in the startup company, Toyota said, but the full price wasn’t disclosed.

Toyota Connect will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to collect and analyse data. In January, Toyota began a $1 billion, five-year investment in Toyota Research Institute Inc., which is setting up centers near Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Leading the effort is Gill Pratt, the former top robotics engineer for the U.S. military.