Asian Tech Press (SEP 29) -- According to Reuters, Toyota Motor Corp's Silicon Valley research arm said it had acquired automotive operating system software company Renovo to help accelerate the development of fully autonomous, connected vehicles.

James Kuffner, head of Toyota's Woven Planet subsidiary, said at a press conference that "I am hoping to shave off years and months to our minimum viable product launches. A longer-term goal is to design software and operating systems that other automakers would also use".

Renovo develops an operating system for running applications in vehicles related to autonomous driving, maps and other mobility services. Renovo's data management platform allows automakers to constantly learn from their cars.

Toyota is in a technology race with other established car companies and new competitors such as Tesla Inc. and Amazon to build cars that can run without a driver and share data across connected networks.