In a landmark alliance, Isuzu, Hino and Toyota are joining forces to collaborate in electric, fuel-cell, connected and autonomous driving technologies.
Hino is Toyota’s truck division and has been Isuzu’s rival for decades.
“By creating this three-company collaboration, our aim is to streamline the logistics industry in Japan and beyond while moving towards carbon neutrality and developing next-generation CASE [Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric] strategies which include EV, connected and autonomous technologies,” said Toyota’s President Akio Toyoda at the official announcement this week.
“It is true that Isuzu and Hino are rivals in the truck business, but after I invited them to join our collaboration, they understood that working together was the best plan of action to improve the logistics industry.”
According the announcement, Toyota and Isuzu will take a 4.6 per cent stake in each other.
In a media statement released today, Hino said that through this collaboration, they aim to accelerate societal implementation and dissemination of CASE technologies and services and to help address various difficulties facing the transportation industry as well as help achieve a carbon-neutral society.
“Specifically, the three companies plan to jointly work on the development of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), autonomous driving technologies, and electronic platforms centred on the domain of small commercial-purpose trucks,” the statement reads.
“While working together on BEVs and FCEVs to reduce vehicle costs, the three companies plan to advance infrastructure-coordinated societal implementation, such as by introducing FCEV trucks to hydrogen-based society demonstrations in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, and accelerate their dissemination initiatives.”
Through this platform, the partners intend to provide various logistics solutions that not only help improve commercial vehicle transport efficiencies but also contribute to reducing CO2 emissions,” said Hino.
To promote their partnership, Isuzu, Hino, and Toyota are establishing Commercial Japan Partnership Technologies Corporation, a company for planning CASE technologies and services for commercial vehicles based on discussions among its three parent companies.
Going forward, Isuzu, Hino, and Toyota intend to deepen their collaboration while “openly considering cooperation with other like-minded partners”.