There must be something to it when VW turns away from the American startup Argo AI and towards the Israeli company Mobileye. We also noticed Herbert Diess aready sooner in a conversation with the CEO of Mobileye, Prof. Amnon Shashua.

Ford, as the first investor in Argo AI, has completely withdrawn from the Robotaxis and wants to focus exclusively on the development of autonomous driving in normal cars. One may already recognize the two directions.

Mobileye makes a big difference between autonomous driving in a normal vehicle, which is practically accessible to all car drivers, and real self-driving vehicles for several people without anyone with a driver's license.

The previously known distinction, e.g. between levels 3 and 4, is also missing here. There is talk of driving with and without hands on the steering wheel and with eyes open and closed. The latter would then correspond to level 3.

Eyes closed and hands off the steering wheel would then already be level 5, it would be posible e.g. reading a book. However, one places increased demands on such a system. Although initially only suitable for motorways, it would have to cope with all the requirements there as well as their entrances and exits.

It is particularly important that it complete the task properly, i.e. safely. There is an example: stopping to hand over to the driver in a normal lane is not safe, it would have to be done in the hard shoulder.

This results in autonomous driving on freeways in possible stages and robotaxes in the city. Their activities are then always related to a specific one, which was probably measured beforehand, as is the case with the competition.

A date of 2026 is also given for the help on the motorway. The last chip to date has version number 6, and sales of implemented chips have grown by a good 30 percent in every Corona year, including almost all well-known manufacturers apart from Ford, Toyota and Daimler.

Last year, 233 types received the Mobileye chip, which of course the owners didn't notice, but provided the company with a vast amount of data in the various sections of its cloud. The Robotaxis have fewer technical problems than those that have to do with their financing or use.

With the systems currently offered in private cars, however, Mobileye is harsher on the matter. On the one hand, the restrictions, e.g. to 60 km/h, are viewed critically, which actually almost rule out meaningful use, on the other hand one speaks of 'moonshots', i.e. goals that seem almost impossible to achieve.

One doesn't offer any vehicles, not even Robottaxis, but always work together with manufacturers, preferably with those who have their own platforms. Gheely seems to be the favorite manufacturer, just as the products from Chinese manufacturers already account for the largest share of takers.

This is how the four stages indicated above are set one after the other:

At the end of the day, no one is still sitting behind the wheel at all. However, Mobileye also sees the need for a higher authority in a 'back office' that can deal with the system in the car. This is called 'tele-operations'.