Popping the Hood on Rust in the 2026 Toyota RAV4
by Pete LeVasseur
The journey to large scale Rust adoption begins with not just a single step, but many parallel steps. Toyota’s approach focused on two things: (1) building the foundational toolchains required for safety-critical applications; and (2) getting the organization comfortable with shipping a new language into production vehicles. Toyota’s journey reached a milestone this year with shipping Rust in production vehicles worldwide. Rust powers the stable compatibility layer that enables digital cockpit user experiences. Here we’ll discuss some of the rationale behind starting with non-safety-critical areas as a solid way to build up confidence and momentum before delving into safety-critical Rust in your organization!
Pete LeVasseur
he/him
Pete LeVasseur guides Rust adoption efforts at Woven by Toyota and its suitability for the highest levels of safety-criticality. He’s also lead of the Safety-Critical Rust Consortium where there’s a broad base of support for working to make Rust a suitable first-language choice for safety-critical domains such as Automotive, Aerospace, and Industrial. Pete is co-lead of the Rust Project’s Content Team, a member of the Rust Vision Doc Team and loves interviewing those that are doing interesting things with Rust.