Mercedes-Benz and Bosch are partnering to develop self-driving cars, aimed to lead to the production of “robo-taxis”.
Bosch and Mercedes owner Daimler looks to introduce fully automated and driverless driving at the beginning of next decade, with plans to develop and launch a production-ready system for driverless cars on urban public roads.
Bosch said Mercedes would be able to use the jointly developed system for two years before it could be offered to competitors. The deal will help the automotive supplier make up ground in a competitive autonomous driving system sector where rivals Continental, Delphi, ZF and others have also made heavy investments.
Bosch and Daimler aim to improve the flow of traffic in cities, enhance safety on the road and provide an important building block for the way traffic will work in the future. The technology will, among other things, boost the attraction of car sharing. According to the statement made by both companies, the technology will allow people to make the best possible use of their time in the vehicle and open up new mobility opportunities for people without a driver’s licence, for example.
The pact between the world’s largest maker of premium cars and the world’s largest automotive supplier forms a powerful counterweight to new auto industry players like ride-hailing firms Uber and Didi which are also working on self-driving cars.
Daimler’s statement wrote that “The idea behind it is that the vehicle should come to the driver rather than the other way round. Within a specified area of town, customers will be able to order an automated shared car via their smartphone. The vehicle will then make its way autonomously to the user and the onward journey can commence.”
According to a Reuters report, the current Mercedes E-Class can cruise without driver input on highways, keeping the distance to the car in front and staying in lane using a system which has “level 2” autonomy. Full autonomy – known as an “eyes off, brains off” or “level 5” system – does away with even the need for a steering wheel.
“We don’t want to wait until level 3 has arrived before we start with level 4/5. That will be too late,” von Hugo told Reuters, adding the prospect of new revenue streams from maintaining fleets of robo-taxis was a big motivating factor for doubling up the carmaker’s R&D efforts.
“If you take the robo-taxi, you start perhaps in a city or several cities or areas of cities, and then you grow from there,” he said. “The key is to get to something that you can commercialise, scale up.”
Bosch recently announced an alliance with chipamaker Nvidia to develop a self-driving computer for production cars. Mercedes-Benz and auto supplier ZF also have separate alliances with Nvidia.
This report is sourced from Daimler’s release, with additional information from Reuters.
