Toyota, the world’s largest automaker, has largely kept quiet on its self-driving car program. The Japanese company has released some information about its test vehicles and the types of sensors it’s using, but we’ve seen very little of the cars in operation.
That’s about to change in 2020: Toyota says it will be conducting a limited ride-hailing pilot in downtown Tokyo with its fleet of “SAE Level-4” automated vehicles. (SAE stands for the Society of Automobile Engineers, and Level 4 is a reference to the group’s classification for an autonomous vehicle that can perform all of the driving tasks under a specific set of conditions, such as weather or geography.)