China’s Byton - a newcomer co-founded by two former BMW executives - has already released plans for a premium electric SUV vehicle, the latest in a series of China-backed autonomous prototypes shown off in the past two years.
Aurora, launched in 2016 by a group of self-driving veterans, is already working with Volkswagen AG and Hyundai Motor Co to develop a platform for autonomous driving within the carmakers’ vehicles.
The company was co-founded by Chris Urmson, the former head of Alphabet Inc’s Google’s self-driving program, Sterling Anderson, who ran Tesla Inc’s autopilot program, and robotics expert Drew Bagnell.
Unveiled last month at CES in Las Vegas, Byton’s US$45,000 (RM177,000) vehicle features a dashboard screen spanning the width of the car and a tablet device on the steering wheel.
Byton plans to build the vehicle in Nanjing. It it will be available in China near the end of 2019, with the United States and Europe to follow.
First models will be partially autonomous, providing advanced driver assistance systems, with full autonomy to be enabled from 2020 through a software upgrade, Byton has said.
Byton chief executive Carsten Breitfeld said in September that current carmakers, for the most part, have not built vehicles taking full advantage of consumer electronics.
“Apple created a platform and profits from every transaction made with their objects. We will offer content for our consumers,” Breitfeld said, adding that designing a car where drivers and passengers can watch movies, make conference calls or surf the internet is his goal.
“For this you need a completely different architecture and computing power,” Breitfeld said.
The company opened a North American headquarters in Silicon Valley in December and has already announced it is working with global auto suppliers Bosch and Faurecia SA on powertrain and braking systems, and interiors, respectively.
In a related development, Nvidia Corp and German auto supplier Continental AG said on Monday they had teamed up to develop a self-driving system based on the US chipmaker’s artificial intelligence platform, underscoring the need for collaboration in the fast-moving industry.
The announcement is the latest of many collaborations for Nvidia, whose Drive platform that helps enable autonomous driving is ubiquitous in the industry. The Silicon Valley-based company known for its graphics chips said last month that 320 companies involved in the development of self-driving cars use Nvidia Drive.
Automakers and their suppliers have sought alliances to share the high costs of developing self-driving cars, which are expected to start appearing in the marketplace over the next few years as so-called robo-taxis at first.
Still, experts expect the transition from human-driven to automated cars could take a decade or more.
Nvidia and Continental said in a statement their self-driving vehicle system, which will integrate a range of Continental sensors, will be introduced in 2021, after a period of collaboration between engineering teams from both companies. The companies did not disclose financial terms for the partnership.
At CES in Las Vegas last month, Nvidia announced partnerships with Uber Technologies and Volkswagen AG . The company also works with electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc and China’s Baidu.
Continental - which also works on self-driving with Baidu - is part of a separate consortium of automakers and suppliers working together to develop full autonomous driving systems.
Led by BMW, that alliance also brings together Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV Intel Corp and Intel’s vision systems subsidiary Mobileye, with Continental handling integration of components and software. U.S. auto supplier Aptiv is also part of the alliance.
