Volkswagen and Bosch attack Tesla - cooperation for autonomous driving

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Production of the electric car ID.3 in Zwickau: "Making partially and highly automated driving suitable for the masses"

Photo: RONNY HARTMANN / AFP

The VW software subsidiary Cariad (“Car I am digital”) and the automotive supplier Bosch are joining forces to develop automated driving.

The cooperation should make functions that temporarily take over driving more quickly suitable for the masses, the companies said on Tuesday.

In addition, a software platform for partially and highly automated driving is being developed.

The cooperation will strengthen Germany as a location for innovation in a key future area of ​​the auto industry, explained Cariad boss Dirk Hilgenberg.

As global leaders in the industry, Bosch and VW could take a “giant step in the development of automated driving.”

For a long time, the German auto industry was considered to be left behind when it came to autonomous driving.

VW boss Herbert Diess had repeatedly warned that US rival Tesla, with its hundreds of thousands of digitally networked vehicles, was collecting significantly more data than Volkswagen with its millions of cars that are on the roads around the world today.

With its digital know-how, the Californian e-car pioneer can improve its driver assistance systems much more quickly.

Volkswagen's cooperation with Bosch is now intended to eliminate the backlog: With the help of Volkswagen's large vehicle fleet, the partners also want to systematically collect data, for example for high-resolution maps: the more extensive the information from real road traffic, according to a joint press release, "the more robust and natural". the partially and highly automated driving functions could be further developed.

The first functions such as automatic distance keeping are to be introduced in models of all brand groups of the Volkswagen Group in 2023.

However, they should not be exclusive to VW, so that Bosch can also offer them to other customers and set new standards, as Bosch Managing Director Markus Heyn explained.

Bosch and Cariad also want to tackle completely driverless driving on defined routes such as motorways – the fourth and penultimate level of automation according to the globally valid definition.

They plan to have more than 1000 professionals from both houses work on the software.

Until last year, Bosch had been working on a similar major project with Daimler.

In order to share costs and pool know-how, the two Stuttgart-based companies had been working on the development of robotic taxis with test fleets in the USA since 2018.

Daimler had cut funds for this at the end of 2019 because the carmaker's capital requirements were too high and the profit prospects too uncertain.

In the middle of last year it was said that the cooperation had ended.

In December, Daimler's passenger car subsidiary Mercedes-Benz announced that it was the first manufacturer in the world to have the go-ahead for the use of highly automated driving and to introduce it in Germany in the luxury S-Class model in the first half of the year.

sh/Reuters