Waymo's next robotaxi is a Toyota bZ4X, bound for Japan and the UK

Waymo and Toyota announced on Friday that Toyota will build a self-driving version of its bZ4X electric SUV for Waymo's robotaxi fleet, with Japan and the United Kingdom as the first markets. The vehicles will roll off Toyota's Takaoka factory in Japan fitted with Waymo's autonomous driving system, marking the first time Waymo has put a Toyota model into production for its service.

The announcement matters because Waymo has relied almost entirely on a single vehicle platform, the Jaguar I-Pace, to run its robotaxi service across US cities including Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. Sourcing a second vehicle from a mainstream automaker with Toyota's manufacturing scale signals that Waymo is treating international expansion as a priority serious enough to justify diversifying its hardware supply chain, rather than exporting the same I-Pace fleet everywhere.

The deal traces back to April 2025, when Toyota and Waymo signed a preliminary, vaguely worded agreement to "explore" autonomous vehicle collaboration. Friday's announcement is the concrete result of roughly 18 months of work on that early framework. In Japan, Waymo plans to begin testing the autonomous bZ4X in 2027, working toward a robotaxi service in the country — Waymo has already lined up taxi operator Nihon Kotsu and ride-hailing app GO as local partners for its broader Tokyo push. In the UK, Waymo has been testing autonomous Jaguar I-Pace vehicles in London for months and is waiting on regulatory permits before launching a public service; the bZ4X is intended for the UK and other right-hand-drive markets where Toyota already has manufacturing and supply relationships.

Toyota executive vice president Hiroki Nakajima said the company wants to "bring it to customers in Japan and beyond through Waymo's ride-hailing service," and that Toyota will continue studying how integrating vehicles with traffic infrastructure can improve road safety for people outside the car as well as inside it. The companies also said they'll keep exploring bringing Waymo's self-driving technology to personally owned Toyota vehicles — a separate, more ambitious track from the robotaxi fleet business — though neither side offered specifics on timeline or scope. No financial terms of the manufacturing arrangement were disclosed.

For the robotaxi industry, the deal looks less like a deep technology partnership and more like a conventional vehicle-supply arrangement: Toyota builds cars to Waymo's specifications, much as any automaker supplies vehicles to a fleet operator. That's a notable shift in posture from Waymo, which has historically guarded tight integration between its self-driving stack and a narrow set of vehicle platforms. Bringing in a high-volume manufacturer gives Waymo a faster path to scaling internationally than retrofitting I-Pace units would allow, particularly in right-hand-drive markets where Jaguar Land Rover's supply chain is thinner. It also puts Toyota — which has moved more cautiously into autonomy than GM, Hyundai, or Chinese automakers — into a visible role in one of the most closely watched robotaxi expansions outside the US.

As reported by TechCrunch, Waymo has not disclosed a specific launch date for either the Japan testing program or the UK commercial service beyond the 2027 timeframe for Japan.