• Toyota Motor Corp (NYSE: TM) backed autonomous driving tech company, Pony.ai, is eyeing U.S. listing plans to fund its goal of monetizing driverless ride-hailing services, Reuters reported.
• The startup is active in the U.S. and China and aims to install its technology in hundreds of vehicles in 2021, reaching tens of thousands in 2024-2025.
• Self-driving startups like Alphabet Inc's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Waymo and General Motors Co's (NYSE: GM) Cruise have been racing to raise capital as the industry prepares to scale up operations.
• Industry bottlenecks include technological challenges, colossal production costs, regulatory and public concerns regarding complete automation safety.
• Pony.ai recently roped in JPMorgan Chase & Co's (NYSE: JPM) Lawrence Steyn as the CFO to accomplish its goals.
• Former Google and Baidu Inc (NASDAQ: BIDU) engineers co-founded Pony.ai and have raised over $1 billion to date at a $5.3 billion valuation as of late 2020. The total funding includes $462 million from Toyota.
• Earlier in June, Pony.ai admitted to driverless testing on public roads in California's Fremont and Milpitas ahead of the 2022 robotaxi service launch. It has also been testing driverless vehicles in Guangzhou, China.
• Pony.ai has operated robotaxi services with safety drivers behind the wheel in China and Irvine, California.
• Challenges like reducing manufacturing costs for driverless vehicles while expanding geographically and ensuring safety in different environments loom.
• Price action: TM shares traded higher by 0.39% at $178.36 on the last check Friday.