Automotive

A minibus decorated with All Nippon Airways Co.’s signature blue and white logo motors across the tarmac at Tokyo’s Haneda airport. From the outside, it looks like an ordinary bus, with a person sitting in the driver’s seat — except no one is really operating the vehicle.

Toyota Motor is entering the electric car market at full force, an area it was one step behind in, with technological help from battery partner Panasonic, as it shores up its presence in the world's largest auto market of China.

Toyota Motor and Panasonic announced on Tuesday the establishment of a joint venture by end-2020 to develop and manufacture batteries for electric vehicles.

Toyota Motor's move to sell its automated driving system to other companies reflects its pressing desire to set de facto industry standards in a showdown with Google-affiliated rival Waymo.

Toyota Motor will unveil its newest test vehicle for automated driving at CES, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show, in Las Vegas next week.

Standing in the BMW Group’s Tokyo Bay flagship showroom, Peter Kronschnabl is in his element. He glances around with palpable pride at the beautiful vehicles, which combine top-of-the-line luxury design with state-of-the-art technology. Growing up with a passion for cars and later majoring in business, Kronschnabl joined the firm’s Munich office in 1995, and his career with BMW has since taken him around the world.

Japan has seen a series of incidents in which people inside cars stalled by heavy snow suffered carbon monoxide poisoning.

The National Police Agency on Thursday unveiled a draft bill that would allow vehicles with a high level of autonomous features to run on public roads, with an eye toward implementing the legislation in the first half of 2020.

The time needed to travel between Tokyo and Hokkaido on a Shinkansen bullet train is set to fall below four hours.

Japanese trading house Marubeni will test out automated vehicles at airports serving the Tokyo and Nagoya areas next month, teaming with Tokyo-based autonomous driving startup ZMP.