2024 VW - Autonomous Driving
This is quite a mess in the world of autonomous driving. In order to narrow down the topic a little, we don't want to focus too much on driving on the motorway, although there are already (modest) successes there. We want
to focus on city traffic here and at the same time on a completely different level.
Here you can see a sensational video from a year ago where Mobileye drives through Jerusalem completely autonomously at night. Mobileye and, as we will see, others as well are armed to the teeth with sensors, including
expensive lidar. The Israelis insist on having all systems evaluated individually and then making comparisons and then drawing conclusions.
Here you can see how, two years ago, Cruise boss Kyle Vogt made a night ride in his company's taxi without a driver. But apparently none of that helped. General Motors, whose collaboration with Cruise began so
promisingly, has ordered the operation of robotaxis to be suspended for the time being.
There have even been life-threatening accidents, although as always it is unclear who is to blame. There was hope that they would be able to get started in Phoenix, Houston, Austin, Dallas and Miami now. The California
authorities initially revoked the permission to drive before GM then banned operations nationwide.
This video has been around for a month showing the driverless operation of a Waymo taxi. There have already been comparison tests between Waymo and Tesla. Check out the video below. The difference between Tesla
and the others is that Tesla claims not to need mapping for use in a specific city.
The collaboration with Ford and its partner Argo AI has been nothing short of disastrous. VW entered the partnership between the two relatively late in 2019 with an announced 2.9 billion and a billion directly invested.
Nothing remained apart from high losses. At least the collaboration with Ford continues to be emphasized.
Now VW wants to establish a new collaboration and approach the topic of 'Autonomous Driving Level 4' with Mobileye. It concerns the VW Commercial Vehicles subsidiary and is intended to be designed for large-scale
production, for Europe and even the USA. Mobileye is said to 'develop and deliver software, hardware components and digital maps'.
At the top of the picture you see the vehicle intended for this purpose, the ID.Buzz. It is to be equipped with two independent high-performance computers, 13 cameras, nine lidar and five radar units. Mobileye will work
together with Autonomous Driving Mobility and Transport.
Here is the former boss of VW and the Volkswagen Group, Dr. Herbert Diess in conversation with Professor Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye. Although Diess' successor Oliver Blume cut many projects on the topic of
'autonomous driving', the thread of conversation with Mobileye was never broken.
The date of the announcement is somewhat strange when you look at Mobileye's share price. Did that have any influence that it crashed so mercilessly in January/February, thus delayed a little with regard to the start of the
war? But VW is also having a hard time with its daughters Cariad and Moia. Bosch, where jobs are currently also being cut, is to be added to this.
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