A leading German manufacturing company has publicly announced it will join a self-driving platform which has been developed by BMW, Intel and Mobileye. Continental AG, commonly known as Continental is the world's second-biggest supplier to carmakers by sales.
Continental has confirmed that it will handle all the integration of components and software as the consortium of entities accelerate efforts to develop the self-driving platform it believes will revolutionize the industry. The announcement of Continental joining the alliance already established between the BMW, Intel and Mobileye represents another example of a recurring trend in the automotive industry.
The increased costs to integrate hardware, software and data combined the accelerating pace in the pursued development of self-driving vehicles has rather inevitably resulted in a growing number of partnerships and alliances being forged between car manufacturers and suppliers. Continental has stated that it will play a huge role commercializing the new platform, which is to be sold to other auto manufacturers.
Chief Executive of Continental, Elmar Degenhart expressed his confidence that his organization can meet the demands required for autonomous driving whilst significantly reducing costs than those opting to go independently. He said, "We can meet the steep demands in autonomous driving through an industry-wide collaboration more comprehensively, rapidly and at lower costs than by going alone."
In 2016, it was publicly disclosed that BMW and Intel had joined forces, a few months after that it was announced that Israeli vision system and mapping expert Mobileye had joined the innovation partnership in relation to the self-driving platform that is projected to be commercially available by 2021. US parts maker Delphi Automotive (DLPH.N) has since joined the tie-up.