Toyota, Intel and others form big data consortium for automotive tech

Toyota, Intel and other technology and auto companies are joining hands to form a big data group to support self-driving cars and other future automotive advances.

Swiss telecom equipment maker Ericsson, Japanese auto parts maker Denso and telecoms firm NTT DoCoMo are also part of the group, called the Automotive Edge Computing Consortium that aims to use data to support emerging services such as intelligent driving, creating maps with real-time data and driving assistance based on cloud computing.

“It is estimated that the data volume between vehicles and the cloud will reach 10 exabytes per month around 2025, approximately 10,000 times larger than the present volume. This expected increase will trigger the need for new architectures of network and computing infrastructure to support distributed resources and topology-aware storage capacity,” the group said in a statement.

Last week, Toyota bought a five percent stake in rival Mazda to advance its AI and autonomous tech push and said that it will increase its investment in “crucial fields” related to the future of automotive technology, including self-driving, artificial intelligence, and green vehicle tech.