Courtesy: BMW Group

BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye have announced that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the intention for Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) to be the first automaker to join them in developing a world leading, state-of-the-art autonomous driving platform for global deployment.

The development partners intend to leverage each other's individual strengths, capabilities and resources to enhance the platform's technology, increase development efficiency and reduce time to market. One enabler to achieve this will be the co-location of engineers in Germany as well as other locations. FCA will bring engineering and other technical resources and expertise to the cooperation, as well as its significant sales volumes, geographic reach and long-time experience in North America.

"In order to advance autonomous driving technology, it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers," said FCA Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne. "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."

In July 2016, BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye announced that they were joining forces to make self-driving vehicles a reality by collaborating to bring solutions for highly automated driving (Level 3) and fully automated driving (Level 4/5) into production by 2021. Since then, they have been designing and developing a scalable architecture that can be used by multiple automakers around the world, while at the same time maintaining each automaker's unique brand identities.

The cooperation remains on-track to deploy 40 autonomous test vehicles on the road by 2017 yearend. It also expects to benefit from leveraging data and learnings from the recently announced 100 Level 4 test vehicle fleet of Mobileye, an Intel Company, demonstrating the scale effect of this collaborative approach.

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