Honda is getting more invested in self-driving vehicles, but not on their own. The automaker, along with Japanese commercial vehicles brand Hino, is joining Monet, a mobility company founded by Toyota late last year.

Monet (a combination of "mobility" and "network") was originally established by Toyota and SoftBank last October. It offered a ride-hailing service in Japan and is looking to make that service autonomous as soon as 2020.

Honda and Hino are joining the service, having paid around $2.3 million each for just under 10 percent stake in the company. The majority, at just over 40 percent is held by SoftBank, with the remaining 39 percent going to Toyota.

Monet CEO Junichi Miyakawa spoke about the new partners in a prepared statement.

“This partnership will allow us to coordinate the vehicle data on passenger and object mobility that Hino collects from its trucks and buses and the data Honda obtains from its mobility services that utilize passenger cars and other vehicles so we can further evolve the Monet platform. By integrating these wide and varied datasets, Monet will build an advanced [mobility as a service] platform that helps enable an autonomous driving society and realizes safe and comfortable mobility services to enrich people’s lives.”


It's a little weird to see rival automakers play nice like this.