Toyota to open third U.S. research lab to advance self-driving cars

The Japanese automaker already has a research lab in the Silicon Valley technology hub of Palo Alto, where it works with Stanford University, and another in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it collaborates with MIT. Its new facility near the University of Michigan will have a staff of about 50 employees. The world's top-selling automaker announced in November that it would invest 1 billion in research and development over the next five years in artificial intelligence technologies, which are critical to the computer brains of self-driving cars. Toyota's investment in R&D comes as competition in the fast-moving field of autonomous vehicles expands beyond carmakers in Asia, Europe and the United States to non-traditional sources such as Alphabet's Google and Apple. The new Ann Arbor facility will focus primarily on fully autonomous driving, in which the car takes full control, the company said.