The car industry was so focused on hardware over the past decade that it let firms such as Google’s Waymo take a lead in developing autonomous and connected car technology, according to Peter Wouda.
He said: “In terms of hardware, all that we’ve managed in the group is at a point of perfection – we are top. We were concentrating on that heavily in the last decade, so we have to catch up with connectivity. It’s no surprise that network and connectivity did not come from the car industry when you consider what companies such as Apple have achieved.”
The VW Group is collaborating with technology firm Nvidia and self-driving start-up Aurora Innovations in order to develop its connected car and autonomous technologies.
Wouda acknowledged the importance of working with specialist partners: “It would be naïve to think that complexity can be managed alone. We have to open our doors, collaborate and get other opinions.
“When it was only hardware, we could do it alone, but not any more. It’s smart to do it together with others.”
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1989.........Toyota
In this year Toyota already had autonomy sorted, or so they thought, when asked what it’s use would be they said for taking hard partying Businessmen who were incapable of driving or finding there way Home!, move on today and we’re no further on, I wreck on we’ve another twenty years for full autonomy...
Who cares?
1) As soon as autonomous tech is available I will no longer need to own a car. 2) Why should I or the general public care about VW in particular.
Car companies have no idea...
With car companies typically working on 8-year cycles, the problem for the 'old industry' is they don't know how to innovate like Silicon Valley. The good news for Volkswagen is that nVidia will fast-track them. Its the same processor technology inside Tesla cars which is 5-years ahead of everyone and has a fleet of cars creating billions of miles of data for them right now. Saying that, I still believe the fully Autonomous is a 2030+ thing at the very earliest. The obstacles are still too significant:
- Laws and law makers will require 3-5 years to approve the technology and thats a good thing.
- My car can drive itself today (Model S with Enhanced Autopilot), but I'm not sure I have the confidence to let go of the steeering wheel. It'll take time for a generation of people to see it as the new normal.
- The technology; mapping, processing and logic have years of development ahead.
My last points are to comment on the Volkswagen quote. Why do the car industry Technology leaders say such stupid things like "We're the top." Buddy, the stuff you've worked up is being beaten by school students, let alone the rest of the industry. You've taken tech from nVidia that Tesla announced with them in March 2015.
And I agree with the last comment; what kind of journalism is this? I've seen more depth in a strand of hair. Step-up and take the industry to task. I get totally fed up with Autocar subscriber emails defending their position as "We're going to keep on reviewing cars and the industry just as we always have." You know what, its that same attitude that is killing today's car industry and has resulted in new players dominating categories that we used to contrast/refer to by the best selling vehicle in its space eg. "3-series." Just 1-year into vehicle sales, that whole category in the US, and every other vehicle in the list has been completely obliterated by one car. The industry is seeing seimic shifts and all Autocar can do is to comment on it with 12-lines of drivel. Come on!