Automated cars might be just around the corner, but they are, undeniably, they are down the road. Thanks to the frequent technology interventions, now self-driving have reached a point where they can respond and perform better than human intelligence.
Now, companies are investing their tech expertise and resources to push their limits of innovation to dominate this automated car ecosystem.
Volkswagen, Tesla, Uber, Lyft, Waymo some incumbent automakers, and tech giants like Google & Microsoft are rallying behind strongly to push this concept where the sky is the limit.
According to the Allied Market Research, this autonomous vehicle market could reach from US$54.23 billion in 2019 to US$556.67 billion in 2026, with a CAGR of 39.47%. It also estimates that Europe will lead with a CAGR of 42.6% during 2019-2026.
As per the trends and projections of both, technology and the automobile market, autonomous cars are safer than traditional cars, as they are running on the advanced algorithms of artificial intelligence developed by security firms like Nvidia and Intel. Furthermore, they are powered by innovative IoT sensors and machine learning technologies so that these cars can be auto-parked without human intervention.
Discussing it in terms of technical lexicon, these automated cars rely on computer vision, Radar, LIDAR, GPS, and odometry to detect patterns in real-time for accurate insights.
As aforementioned, all the top-notch organizations are investing heavily to pioneer this technology. Some of the organizations are going forward through collaboration and individual expertise.
In a recent report, Business Insider predicted that as many as 10 million self-driving cars would be on the road as early as 2020
Talking about the collaboration on individual capabilities in the development of automated driving solutions. Volkswagen with its group software company Car. Software organization and Microsoft with its cloud division Azure to develop a cloud-based Automated Driving Platform (ADP) to augment driving experiences at the global level.
Now, Volkswagen with the Azure capabilities will augment its efficiency of the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and AD functions amongst its viable variants.
However, Volkswagen and Microsft have already been in strategic partnership with the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud since 2018. This partnership laid the foundation of Volkswagen’s digital offerings and mobility.
“As we transform Volkswagen Group into a digital mobility provider, we are looking to continuously increase the efficiency of our software development. We are building the Automated Driving Platform with Microsoft to simplify our developers’ work through one scalable and data-based engineering environment. By combining our comprehensive expertise in the development of connected driving solutions with Microsoft’s cloud and software engineering know-how, we will accelerate the delivery of safe and comfortable mobility services,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of the Car Software Organisation.
“This is the next evolution of our foundational work with the Volkswagen Group to enhance their transformation as a software-driven mobility provider,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud + AI at Microsoft. “The power of Microsoft Azure and its compute, data, and AI capabilities will enable Volkswagen to deliver secure and reliable automated driving solutions to their customers faster.”
Build AD and ADAS Solutions Faster with one Development Platform
ADAS and automated driving vehicles can help improve reduces traffic congestion, improve safety standards and make the whole mobility more efficient. But to develop these platforms requires some serious computational capabilities. There about millions of data from road and weather conditions to quantify and the driver behavior needs to be managed based on real-time data.
The Car Software organization will tackle these concerns with Microsoft by simplifying the developer experience and deliver insights from one database comprised of real-time traffic data.
ADP will empower developers to short development cycles from months to weeks and manage all the data efficiently.
Now, by harnessing individual capabilities, both companies intend to enable technology partners to develop tools that integrate with the platform to augment the ability of AD and ADAS solutions
Augmenting the Indigenous Capability of Development of Software in the Car
The Volkswagen group has some serious plans towards the digitization of the car. By 2025, the group is looking forward to investing about 27 billion euros to augment the digitization process. Simultaneously, the group is also increasing its capabilities of developing car software to 60% to 10% today. Needless to mention, the Car Software organization plays a substantial role to augment the digital transformation of the Volkswagen Group toward a software-driven mobility provider.
It combines all the software competencies of the Group. It includes the development of high-performance driving functions for passenger cars into the future Volkswagen models.
