Toyota says that starting in 2021, cars destined for the American marketplace will roll off the assembly line equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology.
The announcement counts Toyota among the first automakers to commit to installing V2V and V2I across their model range. It's a decision the company says it hopes will encourage others to follow suit and spur more rapid development and deployment of self-driving vehicles.
According to Automotive News, Toyota has been building the necessary hardware into its Japanese market models since 2015.
In North America, only General Motors has so far made a similar commitment, having begun building V2V capability into the 2017 Cadillac CTS sedan about a year ago.
Back in 2016, former U.S. president Barack Obama tabled a proposal that would require automakers to build V2V and V2I tech into their vehicles, but suggested a four-year window following the enactment of legislation to give automakers time to comply.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says it will not make a decision on implementing such a regulation before December of this year.
In North America, self-driving cars would communicate with each other and infrastructure in a 5.9 GHz radio communications spectrum that has otherwise largely gone unused.
