Continental said on Tuesday it would join a self-driving platform developed by BMW, Intel and Mobileye with the German auto parts and tire maker handling integration of components and software. As a system integrator, Continental aims to play a key role in the industrialization of the platform for other automotive manufacturers and to bring the joint solutions to the market more quickly.
“We can meet the steep demands in autonomous driving through an industry-wide collaboration more comprehensively, rapidly and at lower costs than by going alone,” Chief Executive Elmar Degenhart said in an emailed statement.
The costs to integrate hardware, software and data and the accelerating pace of development of self-driving vehicles has sparked a growing number of alliances between automakers and suppliers.
In July 2016 BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye announced that they are joining forces to make self-driving vehicles become a reality and are collaborating to bring solutions for highly and fully automated driving into series production by 2021. The Cooperation Partners have since developed a scalable architecture that can be adopted by other automotive developers and carmakers to pursue State-of-the-Art designs and create differentiated brands.
BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye announced in January 2017 that a fleet of approximately 40 autonomous BMW vehicles will be on the roads by the second half of 2017, demonstrating the significant advancements made by the three companies towards fully autonomous driving.
