After Akio Toyoda, CEO and president of Toyota, announced his resignation on Thursday, he shared his advice to his successor and his business philosophy.
Photo by Yoshikazu Tsuno | Gamma-rapho | fake images
LAS VEGAS— ToyotaEngine is exploring the development and production of orbital rockets, President Akio Toyoda said Monday.
The automaker, through its mobility company “Woven by Toyota,” is investing 7 billion Japanese yen ($44.4 million) in Interstellar Technologies Inc., a Japanese private spaceflight company that develops space vehicles. satellite launch.
Toyoda, former CEO and scion of the automaker, said there shouldn't be just “one car company,” referring to teslawhose CEO, Elon Musk, also heads SpaceX, which works on the development of this type of technology.
“We're also exploring rockets, because the future of mobility shouldn't be limited to just the Earth or just one car company,” Toyoda said during a news conference for the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Founded in 2013, Interstellar Technologies has conducted seven launches of its small MOMO suborbital rockets, which first reached space in 2019. The startup has yet to deploy a satellite into orbit, with plans to develop the larger line of ZERO rockets and DECA. to deliver spaceships.
Toyota said the company hopes to leverage its experience in mass production of vehicles for rocket production with Interstellar Technologies.
In the Japanese launch market, Toyota faces Mitsubishi, whose subsidiary Mitsubishi Heavy Industries has developed and launched the H3 series of rockets for JAXA, the country's space agency. Mitsubishi's H3 rocket, which debuted several years late, was intended to be priced competitively with SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets, which dominate the current global launch market.
Woven city
Toyota also announced Monday the completion of the first phase of Woven City, which includes housing for residents and inventors whom the automaker is inviting to come to the site.
The Toyota Woven City was announced five years ago by Toyoda at CES as a “prototype city of the future,” located on a 175-acre plot of land at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan to test and develop new emerging technologies, such as vehicles autonomous.
The president said Woven City's mission is not necessarily to make money, but to be a testing ground and experimental testing ground for future technologies.
