The first milestone comes in 2020, when Toyota plans to introduce vehicles capable of driving themselves on highways. Kuffner said they would be rolling supercomputers.

"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," Kuffner said late last month at TRI-AD's temporary office near Tokyo Station. "We've called it the moonshot of my generation to build this technology and bring it to market."

Toyota teamed with Toyota Group suppliers Aisin Seiki and Denso to invest $2.8 billion in the new company to create the software that runs self-driving vehicles.

Kuffner, an American, took the helm after a stint as chief technology officer at Toyota Research Institute, its future-looking research counterpart in Silicon Valley.

TRI-AD is tasked with making the 2020 technology, called Highway Teammate, a reality.

"If you think about building a research prototype, making a demonstration is pretty easy, but making a product is really hard," Kuffner said. "Whenever we talk about our company, we often talk about being a bridge of the prototype to the product."

Doing so means building a software company from scratch inside one of the most bureaucratic and traditional automakers in Japan. And the company is only partway there.