TOKYO — Toyota has nominated James Kuffner, currently the CEO of its automated driving and robotics arm, to join the board of directors starting in June, signaling a shift in President Akio Toyoda’s priorities away from old-school automotive to next-generation mobility.
Kuffner, 49, will be the second non-Japanese director on the Toyota board pending his approval at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, expected sometime in June. He has described his mission to develop self-driving cars for Toyota as the “moonshot” of his generation.
The American computer expert will retain his title as CEO of the Toyota Research Institute — Advanced Development and take on a new title as Chief Digital Officer, the company said on Wednesday in a press release. Kuffner will also be appointed an operating officer at the parent company; he currently holds a title there of senior fellow for advance R&D and engineering.
Kuffner replaces Didier Leroy, 62, the French chief competitive officer who will be giving up that role. Leroy is the top non-Japanese executive at the country’s biggest automaker. He will stay on as chairman of Toyota’s European business and remain an advisor to the parent company.
The other non-Japanese on the Toyota board is Philip Craven, an outside independent director. He is from the U.K. and served as president of the International Paralympic Committee.
Kuffner joined Toyota in January 2016 after working in Google’s robotics division. At Google, he was part of the initial engineering team that built the tech company’s self-driving car.
At Toyota, Kuffner helped set up the $1 billion Toyota Research Institute in Silicon Valley to develop artificial intelligence that will be the backbone of automated and connected vehicles.
In 2018, he was tapped to be CEO of the $2.8 billion TRI-AD, a separate business set up in Tokyo to spearhead Toyota’s attempt to bridge the gap between research and the showroom floor.
“The prototypes and the preproduction vehicles that the team is building here at TRI-AD are going to be … the most intelligent supercomputer on wheels,” he said last year after TRI-AD opened its office in downtown Tokyo. “We’ve called it the moonshot of my generation.”