Waymo Plans to Test Toyota-Built Robotaxis in Japan in 2027
Waymo, the Alphabet unit, plans to begin testing autonomous Toyota bZ4X vehicles in Japan in 2027. TechCrunch Toyota will manufacture the 2027 bZ4X units at its Takaoka factory and integrate Waymo's self-driving system there. The electric vehicle sold as the bZ4X elsewhere is known as the BZ in the North American market.
The Japan program is intended to end in a commercial service. Waymo intends to eventually operate a robotaxi service, meaning a driverless taxi hailed through an app, in Japan using the autonomous bZ4X. It also intends to deploy the vehicles in other right-hand-drive countries, where the steering wheel sits on the right side of the car, with the U.K. named as an example. Separately, Reuters reported in September that Waymo and its Japanese partners are targeting a driverless taxi service in Tokyo in 2027.
The U.K. track is further along on the road. Waymo has been testing autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in London for months. It plans to launch a robotaxi service there once it receives the necessary permits. The company has not announced a date for that launch, and the Jaguar testing is not tied to the Toyota platform.
The Toyota relationship is older than the current vehicle plan. The two companies signed a preliminary agreement about 18 months before October 2026 to explore developing and deploying an autonomous vehicle platform, meaning a common base vehicle design that the self-driving system is built into. The partnership has since moved from exploration to a specific manufacturing arrangement. The companies will also continue to explore bringing Waymo's technology to personally owned Toyota vehicles, which would extend the work beyond fleet robotaxis.
Waymo's operating footprint in the United States is the current benchmark. Its fully autonomous ride-hailing service is open to the public in San Antonio, San Diego, and Tampa through the Waymo app. Riders in San Antonio can also take fully autonomous rides serving San Antonio International Airport. Since opening service earlier in the year, Waymo says it has welcomed hundreds of thousands of riders across those three cities. Waymo
The broader context here is the vehicle. Waymo's London testing runs on a Jaguar I-Pace, a conventional production car fitted with the sensors and onboard computers that do the driving. The Toyota arrangement moves the work toward a vehicle built on a manufacturer's own production line, with the self-driving system integrated at the factory. For fleet operators, that shifts the question from retrofit engineering toward platform supply, validation across model-year builds, and maintenance of the autonomy software over the vehicle's service life. Right-hand-drive markets add their own constraints on sensor placement, mirrors, and operator interfaces, which a factory-integrated design is better placed to handle than an aftermarket kit.
In my view, the most useful thing to watch is not the timing of any single city launch but whether the Takaoka integration produces a repeatable build process. Robotaxi programs have historically stalled on unit economics and regulatory approvals long before they stall on driving performance. A manufacturer that can build autonomy-capable vehicles at volume gives Waymo a different set of options for entering new markets than a fleet of retrofitted cars does.
The Japan and U.K. plans also indicate that the company is positioning itself as a supplier of autonomous driving capability to an automaker, not only as an operator of its own service. Whether that model scales will depend on the permits, the pricing of the platform, and how the personally owned vehicle work develops. The announced programs are a set of intentions, with dates attached to some of them. The next concrete milestones are the start of Japanese testing in 2027 and the London permit decision.
