In self-driving push, Toyota spends $1B to create Silicon Valley lab

LOS ANGELES — Upping the ante in the smart-car wars, Toyota has announced it will spend $1 billion to create a subsidiary in Silicon Valley that will focus entirely on developing artificial intelligence and robotics.

In creating Toyota Research Institute as a separate entity, Toyota becomes the latest automaker to establish a research arm in the heart of California's high-tech corridor. It also represents a new commitment to California by Toyota after uprooting its U.S. headquarters from the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance, where it had been for decades, to Plano, Texas.

Toyota joins Mercedes-Benz, Ford and a list of other automakers that have been using their Silicon Valley research labs to develop self-driving cars and other promising ways to make cars smarter and safer.

Toyota said its $1 billion investment will suffice for five years. Besides the first lab in Palo Alto, Calif., it will also establish a second in the country's other hot tech gulch, Cambridge, Mass.

The new company starts in January. It is also spending $50 million for artificial-intelligence programs at Stanford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. It will be headed by Gill Pratt, Toyota's executive technical adviser, who becomes CEO.

"It is our responsibility to make life better for our customers, and society as a whole," said Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda. "I want to work with Gill, not just because he is a great researcher, but because I believe that his goals and motivations are the same as ours."

Toyota is already prominent when it comes to self-driving cars. Google has used its Prius hybrid for early self-driving efforts and also has a fleet of self-driving Lexus crossover SUVs.