Driving into the future with European partners

Monday, January 19, 2015

Driving into the future with European partners

Since we revealed our plans last May to build fully self-driving vehicles for testing and learning, we’ve been working on different prototypes. We’ve now put all those systems together into a fully functional vehicle which we discussed recently at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.

These vehicles, designed from the ground up to drive themselves, could only be possible by working with strong European partners and suppliers, including ZF Lenksysteme, Continental, Bosch, FRIMO and many others. ZF Lenksysteme, for example, brought its expertise in steering system development, driver assistance systems and safety concepts. Bosch provided expertise in powertrain development and driver assistance systems and Continental provided expertise in braking systems and other electronics.



In addition to our existing suppliers, we’re looking for automotive industry partners to help bring the vision of self-driving cars to market. We see that our best path forward to this goal is combining our technology with car maker know-how.

The self-driving car project is designed to improve road safety and help people who are blind, disabled or otherwise can’t drive, Much work remains ahead. Our hope is to test prototypes on public roads in later this year. We're excited by the progress we've made so far - and our suppliers are playing a crucial role.