We already knew about Volkswagen’s plans to introduce autonomous EVs for ride-hailing services early next decade. Now, a new collaboration with self-driving tech company Aurora will help the automaker bring driverless cars to market more quickly than it could have alone.
VW will benefit from Aurora’s software and hardware designed for autonomous vehicles. Using Aurora’s tech, VW will explore mobility services for urban and rural areas. The automaker envisions a future where users can order an autonomous car via a mobile app or digital virtual assistant.
“This partnership establishes a deep collaboration using Aurora’s self-driving technology, and together we will bring self-driving vehicles to market at scale,” said Aurora CEO Chris Urmson in a statement.
The companies will test the self-driving system in select cities. Eventually, the technology can deploy in a variety of products across the Volkswagen Group. These may include shuttles, delivery vans, trucks without a cabin, and fully self-driving pods like the SEDRIC concept the automaker debuted last year. Imagined with a retractable steering wheel that can fold into the dash, Volkswagen’s I.D. concept also hinted at the automaker’s ambitions for self-driving cars.
Hyundai also announced today that it has partnered with Aurora to bring highly automated cars to market by 2021.
Source: Volkswagen
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