Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) will join BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye in developing an autonomous driving platform for global deployment. The groups on Wednesday, have signed a memorandum of understanding with FCA to be the first automaker to join them in the development of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous technologies for production vehicles.
“In order to advance autonomous driving technology, it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers,” said FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne. “Joining this cooperation will enable FCA to directly benefit from the synergies and economies of scale that are possible when companies come together with a common vision and objective.”
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The development partners intend to increase development efficiency and reduce time to market.
BMW Group, Intel, Mobileye and FCA, together invite and welcome additional automakers and technology suppliers to join them in adopting this autonomous driving platform in an effort to create an industry-wide solution.
FCA will bring to the cooperation engineering, technical resources, as well as its significant sales volumes, geographic reach and long-time experience in North America.
In July 2016, BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye were joining forces to make self driving vehicles for highly automated driving (Level 3) and fully automated driving (Level 4/5) into production by 2021.
Since then, they have been designing and developing a “scalable architecture” that can be used by multiple automakers around the world, while at the same time maintaining each automaker’s unique brand identities.
The cooperation remains on-track to deploy 40 autonomous test vehicles on the road by 2017 year end.
It also expects to benefit from leveraging data and learnings from the recently announced 100 Level 4 test vehicle fleet of Mobileye, an Intel Company, demonstrating the scale effect of this collaborative approach.
“The two factors that remain key to the success of the cooperation are uncompromising excellence in development and the scalability of our autonomous driving platform,” said Harald Krüger, Chairman of the Board of BMW in a statement. “With FCA as our new partner, we reinforce our path to successfully create the most relevant state-of-the-art, cross-OEM Level 3-5 solution on a global scale.”
“The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customize,” said Brian Krzanich, Intel CEO. “We’re thrilled to welcome FCA’s contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world’s safest autonomous vehicles.”
“We welcome FCA’s contributions and use of the cooperation’s platform, which has made substantial progress over the last year and is rapidly entering the testing and execution phase,” stated Professor Amnon Shashua, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of Mobileye, an Intel Company. “The combination of vision-intense perception and mapping, differentiated sensor fusion, and driving policy solutions offers the highest levels of safety and versatility, in a cost-efficient package that will scale across all geographies and road settings.”
