One of the most intriguing and tight-lipped startups building technology for self-driving vehicles said Thursday it has inked partnerships with two major global automakers.
Aurora Innovation, founded in late 2016 by some of the autonomous industry’s most influential leaders, said it is forming collaborations with Volkswagen and Hyundai in efforts to deploy driverless vehicles in commercial operations by 2021.
While there aren’t many specifics yet available on which Volkswagen vehicles will receive Aurora’s self-driving systems, the German automaker indicated it intends to use them across its brand lineup in electric vehicles and in purpose-built autonomous cars like the Sedric van prototype shown in Geneva in March 2017. Hyundai officials, meanwhile, said they will integrate the startup’s systems on the hydrogen fuel-cell SUV unveiled last summer (shown below).
The companies made their announcements Thursday in the run-up to CES, the annual consumer-technology spectacle in Las Vegas that has placed increasing emphasis on driverless vehicles in recent years.
Until then, Aurora Innovation, which has offices in Silicon Valley and Pittsburgh, hadn’t divulged much about its intentions. But it has been nonetheless closely watched, because its founders include Chris Urmson, a former director of Google’s self-driving car project, Sterling Anderson, the first director of Tesla Motors’ Autopilot feature, and Drew Bagnell, a founding member of Uber’s Advanced Technology Center.
Terms of the partnerships were not disclosed. They come at a time when major OEMs and suppliers are either heavily investing in or buying self-driving startups outright, such as Ford investing $1 billion in Argo AI and what was then Delphi buying nuTonomy for $450 million in October. Aurora would seem primed to follow suit for a similar payday, but the company intends to remain independent, like Waymo, and work within key strategic partnerships such as the ones unveiled Thursday.
Last fall, Urmson indicated the latter in a rare interview, telling Recode, “That’s the goal for Aurora, to get self-driving cars on the road as quickly as possible and do that safely and thoughtfully and do it through partnerships with folks that can help us.”
Aurora’s engineers have been working to develop a complete self-driving system that includes sensors, hardware, and software. They’ve been partnering with Volkswagen at VW’s Automotive Innovation Lab at Stanford University for the past six months to integrate the systems into VW platforms. Eventually, Volkswagen said, it intends to introduce the technology in mobility-as-a-service applications, though it’s curious the company did not mention its new mobility brand, Moia, in an otherwise lengthy release on the Aurora partnership.
Volkswagen’s blueprints in this realm come at a time when analysts expect traditional car ownership to decline and significant growth in mobility-as-a-service options. In a study published earlier this week, global analytics and consulting firm IHS Markit forecast that 33 million autonomous vehicles will reach roads across the world by 2040 and that there will be 12 average users for driverless cars in mobility-service roles.
The arrival as Aurora as a prime developer of self-driving systems may mark a crossroads for VW. At least within its Audi brand, the company had split its automated-development efforts between a group working on Level 3 technology in Silicon Valley and a group working on Levels 4 and 5 in Germany.
“
“It seems to be that this indicates VW is going to concentrate on Levels 2 and 3 with its in-house technology and hand the software development for Level 4 and 5 to Aurora.”
—Mike Ramsey, Gartner
”
“I think it’s interesting that VW is doing this at all,” says Mike Ramsey, a transportation and mobility analyst for global technology research firm Gartner. “VW was one of the earliest companies to have a self-driving program in California. It seems to be that this indicates VW is going to concentrate on Levels 2 and 3 with its in-house technology and hand the software development for Level 4 and 5 to Aurora,” he said, commenting that what’s suprising is “not the capabilities of Aurora; it’s that VW wouldn’t want to use its existing development efforts.”
A Volkswagen spokesperson said the relationship between its existing team and Aurora is “complementary” and that Aurora helps the company secure “our agility and market readiness.”
For Hyundai, the partnership with Aurora centers around deploying the technology in custom-developed vehicles capable of Level 4 autonomous operations—those that require no human role from the start of a journey to its end, albeit in geofenced areas. Hyundai officials said they’ll launch the technology in the fuel-cell SUVs, to be deployed in select cities, although the company is not yet discussing the specifics behind where and when those pilot programs will take place.
“We know the future of transportation is autonomous, and autonomous driving technology needs to be proven in the real world to accelerate deployment in a safe and scalable manner,” said Woong-Chul Yang, vice chairman of Hyundai.
While the partnerships mark concrete mileposts for two companies already on the road toward autonomous deployments, they mark merely the beginning for Aurora. With a few big OEMs still without a major partner still out there, it will be interesting to see whether Urmson and his colleagues will soon have more announcements up their sleeve, whether at CES or beyond.
from Car and Driver BlogCar and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/2qpIDz1
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment