Nuro tests autonomous vehicle tech on Tokyo streets in first international deployment

Nuro is testing its autonomous vehicle tech on Tokyo's streets | TechCrunch

Nuro, the Silicon Valley-based startup backed by Nvidia, Uber, and Softbank, is testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Japan. Toyota Prius vehicles equipped with Nuro's self-driving software -- and human safety operators behind the wheel as backup -- began testing on public roads in Tokyo last month. The testing marks the first overseas expansion for the startup, which upended its business model two years ago. Nuro said testing in Japan introduces a number of new challenges and different driving styles and rules. For instance, vehicles drive on the left side of the road, and Tokyo's streets have dense traffic. Road signs and lane markings are also different in Japan. The company, which opened offices in Tokyo last August, did not disclose how many test vehicles are in its fleet or when it might remove the human safety operator from the vehicles. The company did suggest, in a blog post announcing the testing in Japan, that there will be future expansions. "Our autonomous operations in Tokyo are the beginning of the compounding benefits of global deployment," the company wrote. Nuro, founded in 2016 by early Google self-driving project engineers Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, initially focused on developing and operating a fleet of low-speed, on-road delivery bots. Nuro's pitch and pedigree got the attention of Softbank Vision Fund, which invested $940 million into the startup in 2019. Nuro had a buzzy start, but the cost of development and a wave of consolidation forced the company to cut staff and assess its business model. In 2024, it ditched the low-speed bots and decided to license its technology to automakers and mobility providers, like ride-hail and delivery companies. The company's autonomy stack is built on an end-to-end AI foundation model that allows the system to learn as it drives, according to Nuro. This AI strategy, which it calls "zero-shot autonomous driving," allowed Nuro's software to autonomously navigate public roads in Tokyo without any prior training on Japanese driving data, the company's blog post said. U.K.-based startup Wayve, which recently raised $1.2 billion, has taken a similar end-to-end AI approach to its self-driving software. Nuro says that this AI approach, which designed to be broadly capable, doesn't mean it's disregarding safety. The company said that it conducts closed-course testing of each new release of its universal autonomy model and evaluates performance and tests edge cases using simulation. Once the autonomous vehicles are on the road, they are manually driven while Nuro's software operates in "shadow mode." Nuro said the foundational AI model produces what the software would do, but the commands are not sent to vehicle controls. Nuro checks the results to determine if the system is ready to operate autonomously on public roads. Nuro has gained some traction and investors for its approach to self-driving software. Last year, Nuro raised $203 million in two tranches in a Series E round that included existing backer Baillie Gifford and new investors Icehouse Ventures, Kindred Ventures, Nvidia, and Pledge Ventures. Uber, which has said it would make a "multi-hundred-million dollar" investment in Nuro as part of a broader deal with the electric car maker Lucid, also participated.

US Self-Driving Startup Nuro Begins Testing in Tokyo

Japan is lagging in terms of the regulatory framework needed for autonomous vehicles, with the law still requiring a human being to be sitting in the driver's seat of a self-driving car, regardless of its level of autonomy. Self-driving car startup Nuro Inc. has begun testing its technology in Japan's capital city, the US company's first location abroad after partnering with Uber Technologies Inc. and Lucid Group Inc. Backed by the likes of Nvidia Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., Mountain View, California-based Nuro aims to compete with other driverless operators such as Google parent Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and Amazon.com Inc.'s Zoox in the nascent market for commercialized fully-autonomous vehicles. "Obviously there are a number of Japanese OEMs that are very interesting potential customers to us in the future," Andrew Chapin, Nuro's chief operating officer, said in an interview, using an industry term for car manufacturer. He declined to name any possible partners or confirm if Nuro is currently in talks with a Japan-based automaker. Nuro has deployed a "handful" of test cars in Tokyo and opened a local office to begin data collection, the company announced Thursday. It will join Waymo, which is testing vehicles in partnership with a Japanese taxi operator, and other smaller-scale pilot test programs in and around Tokyo. While the megacity is becoming a test bed of sorts for the world's leading robotaxi ventures, Japan is lagging when it comes to the regulatory framework needed for autonomous vehicles to gain traction. The law still requires a human being to be sitting in the driver's seat of a self-driving car, regardless of its level of autonomy. Chapin said Tokyo's narrow and winding streets, often crowded with right-handed cars driving on the left side of the road, will present a fresh test for its AI technology, but that Nuro's systems are designed to adapt and respond in real time. "Testing the capability of the autonomy system in such an interesting market with some international complexity really is a good pressure test of what the system is capable of," he said, adding that achieving Level 4 autonomy -- where a vehicle can drive by itself under limited conditions -- is the company's ultimate goal. Uber last year tapped Nuro and Lucid to offer driverless rides using electric vehicles in the San Francisco Bay area. Uber said it aims to eventually have a fleet of 100,000 autonomous vehicles using Nvidia's chip technology -- including 20,000 robotaxis powered by Lucid and Nuro -- with the roll out beginning in 2027. Waymo, as part of a global push, has been testing on public roads in Japan since April 2025 and has partnered with Toyota. That carmaker has an agreement with Japanese telecom giant NTT Inc. to jointly invest ¥500 billion ($3.2 billion) in the development of AI and autonomous driving. But Chapin indicated he's not worried about Waymo crowding out other robotaxi operators. "A universal autonomy platform that can be extended to a lot of different applications and form factors is a bit different than the approach Waymo is taking," he said. "We think that there's a very wide range of potential customers out there that need the approach that Nuro is bringing." Meanwhile, Nissan Motor Co. has joined with UK-based AI startup Wayve Technologies Ltd. to prepare the launch of the newest generation of its driver-assistance system. The Yokohama-based carmaker has said the most advanced iteration of its driver-assist technology will be on par with Tesla Inc.'s Full Self-Driving, which despite its name requires human supervision and intervention. While the systems still amount to Level 2 autonomy -- meaning a person must always be ready to take over -- ProPilot amounts to Nissan's best foot forward in contending with the US EV giant and Waymo in the race to build self-driving cars. Nissan is partnering with Uber and Wayve to work together on the mass-production of self-driving cars to supply autonomous ride services globally within a few years, the companies said Thursday. The plan is to introduce pilot cars with safety operators in Tokyo by late 2026.

Nuro's self-driving car tech hits Tokyo streets in first international deployment

March 11 (Reuters) - U.S.-based startup Nuro said on Wednesday its self-driving vehicles are now operating on public roads in Tokyo with safety operators present, marking the company's first international autonomous deployment. The Nvidia- (NVDA.O), opens new tab and Uber- (UBER.N), opens new tab backed company said it did not train its system on Japanese driving data, a capability it calls "zero-shot" autonomy and a potential indication that geography-agnostic self-driving technology is within reach. Most ⁠autonomous driving systems require extensive local data collection and location-specific tuning before operating safely in a new market, a process that can take several months. Also, Japan presents a steep technical challenge, as its left-side driving and right-hand-drive vehicles, along with Tokyo's dense streets, complex traffic interactions, road signs, lane markings and signals, differ significantly from U.S. norms. Nuro said its ⁠autonomy stack learns the underlying structure of safe driving rather than memorizing city-specific rules, allowing it to adapt to unfamiliar environments in real time. Before going live on Tokyo public roads, the ⁠system underwent closed-course testing in Las Vegas, large-scale simulation and "shadow mode" trials, where the AI made decisions without directly controlling the vehicle. To ⁠establish local operations, Nuro built vehicles, secured facilities and hired local teams in Japan. The company added it plans ⁠to incorporate Japan-specific driving data into its universal model over time, with partner deployments expected in the coming months. Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Asia Pacific * ADAS, AV & Safety * Software-Defined Vehicle * Sustainable & EV Supply Chain

Nuro's self-driving car tech hits Tokyo streets in first international deployment

March 11 (Reuters) - U.S.-based startup Nuro said on Wednesday its self-driving vehicles are now operating on public roads in Tokyo with safety operators present, marking the company's first international autonomous deployment. The Nvidia- and Uber- backed company said it did not train its system on Japanese driving data, a capability it calls "zero-shot" autonomy and a potential indication that geography-agnostic self-driving technology is within reach. Most autonomous driving systems require extensive local data collection and location-specific tuning before operating safely in a new market, a process that can take several months. Also, Japan presents a steep technical challenge, as its left-side driving and right-hand-drive vehicles, along with Tokyo's dense streets, complex traffic interactions, road signs, lane markings and signals, differ significantly from U.S. norms. Nuro said its autonomy stack learns the underlying structure of safe driving rather than memorizing city-specific rules, allowing it to adapt to unfamiliar environments in real time. Before going live on Tokyo public roads, the system underwent closed-course testing in Las Vegas, large-scale simulation and "shadow mode" trials, where the AI made decisions without directly controlling the vehicle. To establish local operations, Nuro built vehicles, secured facilities and hired local teams in Japan. The company added it plans to incorporate Japan-specific driving data into its universal model over time, with partner deployments expected in the coming months. (Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)