Name: I Tried Japan's TINIEST AI Taxi...
Uploaded: 2025-03-07T21:01:10.000Z
Duration: 8 min 40 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Stumbled upon it a few nights ago, and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

And at first you're like, well, is this it?

It's a full self-driving tiny taxi robot that can carry up to three people at once.

There's also a ton of technology packed in.

In addition to the cameras here, there's 3D LiDAR sensors here and 2D ones underneath down here, as well as lights for nighttime and emergency stop button.

That is a lot of tech packed into one tiny package.

But if I'm being honest, on its initial glance, this seems like it serves little to no real purpose, especially in the crowded streets of Tokyo.

And with just running it in Tokyo like this costing an astronomical amount, I had to find out why anyone would make this to begin with.

In all fairness, it's a ton of fun to roll around on, and the full self-driving actually worked beautifully, going through doors, stopping for people, and even safely crossing roads without issue.

Even right now, I'm going across a car walk with cars in the background, and it knows well enough.

But I still had so many questions, and when I asked, their CEO offered to take a bit of a ride with me.

So this is Mr. Shimada, kind of the CEO or leader of this group.

Funny enough, the first thing he told me is that the initial inspiration came from, of all things, the freedom of garbage men hopping on and off the back of a garbage truck.

He wanted to replicate this feel and just needed a starting point.

Doing a test like here in Marunouchi, is this expensive?

This is a test we're doing at the International Film Festival, and it's worth millions of yen.

In Japan, there are so many things, and the law is like a net, and it's so well-defined, so it's very difficult to apply it to each and every one of those things.

With this size, with self-driving, without a steering wheel, and without a proper seat, it's very difficult to define which vehicle classification should be applied to the current Japanese law.

Now, mobility stuff in Japan can be tricky.

Technically, anything that can be moved without human input, like a bicycle, is considered a motor vehicle and requires a license plate and a license to drive it.

Even those kickboard scooters you find all over town, which is why Japan was so late to adopt them.

A power assist bicycle, for example, that you still need to pedal, completely fine.

But an e-bike that doesn't require any pedaling from you is technically considered a gensuki, or motorized vehicle, and needs a license plate, and the driver needs a license.

This is actually a self-powered e-bike, and you'll notice there's no license plate on the back, which is illegal, and that's why he has the rear brake leg taped up, hoping that he won't get caught.

But police have even been cracking down on these lately.

So getting into anything mobility-related in Japan is difficult, costly, and risky.

Even skateboards are technically only legal for recreational use in skate parks and on private property.

They can be used on some roads, and often are, but the laws surrounding them are left intentionally vague as to give police as much power as possible.

And since you can't really add brake lights or a license plate to them, an electric skateboard is entirely out of the question.

But despite these difficulties, Japan still has a love for producing mobility devices.

Now, as I cross back over the road again, Japan is actually filled with things like this, little mobility and venture companies that try out new things, many of which never make it to market, but are backed, like this one, by major companies like Mitsubishi and NTT to encourage them to develop technologies and teams that can further the field.

And more often than not, the goal is to have either the technology or the team that developed it be bought out by a major company.

Another great example of it is this tiny electric car that's actually secretly a boat to help people survive tsunamis and floods.

I tested it out a few years back, but unfortunately the company was never able to get us approval to get it into the ocean for the video, so that video never got finished.

Still an incredible little car and an amazing concept, especially after so many people were swept away in their vehicles in the tsunami that hit Japan back in 2011.

Doesn't even have seats for you to take a break, and seems intentionally slow.

Even passersby were commenting and questioning on the purpose and goal.

But since I had access to the CEO and creator, I just asked directly.

But the first response I got from him kind of felt like a corporate line out of a pamphlet more than anything.

Now, in his defense, when you've explained your passion to people enough times over and over, this type of oversimplification is a trap that any of us will fall into easily.

So I asked him to share a little bit of the origin story, and this is where we got an answer based in personal passion that just felt a little more personal.    Real.

But when you're on this, you see this view.

And I started to think that this is a very important experience for modern people.

He's a dreamer, who just wants the world to slow down a little bit and enjoy everything that's around them.

A mindset that really could do wonders in a metropolis like Tokyo.

You know, in a world where big companies like Tesla and other giants are making autonomous taxis and self-driving cars, something small and simple and wooden like this may seem futile, in some ways even dystopian.

But every big company starts small at one point, and it's what they represent that really matters.

The little guy making efforts to move technology or our world forward in some way.

Now, there's always gonna be critics who spew a bunch of negativity, but critics are often talkers and not doers.

I personally don't ever see fleets of these massing the streets of Tokyo and Osaka.

Maybe I'm just too cynical to see the value proposition outside of the novelty.

But what I do see is a team of passionate people creating and moving things forward.