On October 28, local time, the Volkswagen Group announced that it will form a subsidiary called Volkswagen Autonomy (VWAT, Volkswagen Autonomy), focusing on promoting the development and commercial implementation of L4 level and above autonomous driving systems, and will automatically drive freight Trucks and self-driving taxis are introduced to the market.

The most abundant funds?

VWAT is led by Alexander Hitzinger, Senior Vice President of Volkswagen Group in charge of autonomous driving. It will set up headquarters in Munich and Wolfsburg, Germany, and plans to set up branches in Silicon Valley and China in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Volkswagen Group said it will become "the world's most well-funded start-up company" and plans to concentrate all autonomous driving research and development forces within the group into VWAT by the end of this year.

Hitchinger said that the Volkswagen Group plans to start the large-scale commercialization of autonomous driving in the middle of the next decade. All brands under the group, including high-end brands such as Audi, Porsche, and Bentley, as well as Volkswagen, Skoda, Seat and other high-end brands Brands can use VWAT's professional technology.

The startup’s first project will be a self-driving freight and passenger version of Volkswagen’s upcoming minibus I.D. Buzz, which will be developed in cooperation with the Volkswagen Light Commercial Vehicle Division. Volkswagen Group predicts that autonomous vehicles will be most likely to be used for logistics and shared travel, transporting people and goods in urban areas.

In July of this year, Volkswagen Group announced a cooperation with Ford in the field of autonomous driving, investing US$2.6 billion in Argo AI, of which US$1 billion was in cash, and US$1.6 billion was to merge the original Volkswagen’s autonomous driving subsidiary AID into Argo. Under AI. Argo AI is controlled by Ford. In 2017, Ford invested US$1 billion in Argo AI. At that time, the latter had less than 12 employees. Now it has become an important focus of Volkswagen and Ford's autonomous driving development strategy.

Volkswagen officially revealed that the newly established VWAT is mainly responsible for the engineering and industrialization of autonomous driving, while the previously invested Argo AI is more inclined to the development of autonomous driving software. In the future, VWAT and Argo AI will cooperate closely. It can be seen that the main purpose of Volkswagen to establish VWAT is to accelerate the commercial implementation of autonomous driving.

Autonomous driving competition starts

According to the plan, by 2023, the Volkswagen Group will invest 44 billion euros in the "new four modernizations", of which about 14 billion euros will be used for the development of digitalization, mobile travel services and autonomous driving.

Currently, the competition for autonomous driving is in full swing. Google's parent company Alphabet's Waymo, General Motors' Cruise, and Ford Holdings' Argo AI are leading the way. Volkswagen Group also made a big bet, believing that it can catch up. VWAT plans to bring driverless taxis and trucks to three continents by 2025.

And other competitors are not idle. Hyundai Motor Group recently announced that it will cooperate with Chinese autonomous driving company Xiaoma Zhixing to launch the autonomous driving travel service BotRide in California, USA. Starting from November 4th, BotRide's service will be open to hundreds of residents in Irvine, California, to realize shared travel through smart carpool deployment. BotRide is also California's first self-driving taxi normalized service for the general public. The model used in this service is a Hyundai Kona electric SUV equipped with Pony Smart L4 autonomous driving system.

At almost the same time, Toyota Motor also stated that it plans to provide L4 autonomous vehicles in central Tokyo during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics. Ford stated that it will launch autonomous driving car-hailing services in the United States on a "large scale" starting in 2020. General Motors recently postponed the launch of its self-driving taxi service until after 2019.

Autonomous driving startup Zoox is carrying out autopilot road tests in Las Vegas, USA, and Las Vegas is also the second city for Zoox autopilot road tests. Prior to this, the company has been conducting road tests of autonomous vehicles in and around San Francisco. As for China's Didi Chuxing, its autonomous driving department has been upgraded to an independent company, focusing on autonomous driving research and development, product applications and related business development.

Like the Volkswagen Group, Waymo also believes that autonomous driving technology will first be applied to freight. Waymo CEO John Krafchick said to the outside world in Detroit a few days ago: "Truck transportation is a very interesting application scenario for Waymo drivers, and we hope to bring it to the market as soon as possible."