HAMBURG (Reuters) – Volkswagen designs to acquire most of the software package necessary for autonomous automobiles in-dwelling, the head of the German carmaker’s luxury device Audi stated on Tuesday.
The carmaker is not rejecting collaborations in some regions outright, explained Markus Duesmann, who as very well as operating Audi is also on Volkswagen’s management board, wherever he is dependable for analysis and progress.
“But we are going to make the bulk of the program on our personal in the upcoming,” he mentioned during an industry event.
Asked no matter whether Volkswagen was looking to Alphabet’s Google as a benchmark in software improvement, Duesmann mentioned it preferred to be at the very least on the similar level.
“We accept the problem,” he added.
Daimler and Volkswagen are operating on their individual operating techniques for autonomous automobiles to make positive they have a possibility to compete with massive tech companies these as Apple and Amazon in the area of electrical motor vehicle details.
Despite phone calls to team up with rivals, Volkswagen is so much organizing to go it alone, pointing to its placement as the world’s next-most significant carmaker.
“We have a dimension that would make us want to cooperate with ourselves originally,” mentioned Duesmann, adding that Volkswagen is assured it can established new standards in software package progress.
If other firms preferred to sign up for these standards it would be doable for them to do so, the Audi executive included.
Volkswagen has bundled its software package competence into a recently formed unit Auto.Application.Org, which employs about 5,000 and develops the VW.OS running system.
(Reporting by Jan Schwartz Composing by Christoph Steitz Modifying by Alexander Smith)