Last week, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) announced its plans to join the likes of BMW, Intel and Mobileye for the development of semi-autonomous and fully autonomous vehicles, along with “robotaxis” that can be requested via smartphones.
According to business consultants at McKinsey, the market for self-driving cabs could be worth up to $2 trillion by 2030.
By joining the group of technology companies and automakers, FCA now has the ability to contribute to the process of enhancing self-driving technology for production vehicles.
“In order to advance autonomous driving technology, it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers,” said FCA CEO Sergio Marchionne in the release. “Joining this cooperation will enable FCA to directly benefit from the synergies and economies of scale that are possible when companies come together with a common vision and objective.”
Before FCA’s involvement, the group had already made significant progress in its driverless technology initiatives. BMW, Intel and Mobileye were previously working together on building a platform that is specifically designed to be scalable from a more moderate autonomous software to a highly advanced one.
The long-term goal of the super group is to be able to deploy a commercial fleet of self-driving vehicles by the year 2021.
Significant progress has been made to date by the German automaker and the technology companies, including the plan to have about 40 self-driving test cars on the road by the end of this year.
“The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customize,” Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said. “We’re thrilled to welcome FCA’s contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world’s safest autonomous vehicles.”
Along with the news of FCA’s addition to the group, it has also been revealed that the group plans to deploy 100 Level 4 autonomous test vehicles in the U.S., Europe and Israel via Intel and Mobileye.
FCA spokespersons have expressed that their contributions to the group effort would be focused on adding additional engineering and technical resources that could help advance the self-driving platform.
“There was an expectation Fiat Chrysler was resigned to being a hardware manufacturer for Apple or Google,” said James Hodgson, a senior analyst at ABI Research. “This is a sign that they are going to take a more active role.”
While automakers from all over the world race toward mass production of self-driving vehicles, FCA’s partnership with the BMW/Intel/Mobileye group may help them gain an advantage over the rest of the competition.