Volkswagen is reportedly planning to bridge its gap in autonomous driving by collaborating with the British startup Wayve. According to several insiders cited by “Der Spiegel”, the London-based AI company has successfully convinced the world’s most valuable conglomerate-Nvidia, the AI chip producer-to step aside. Nvidia had also applied for the contract to bring the driver assistance systems for VW Group brands like Audi and Porsche up to the level of those offered by Tesla and Mercedes.
Insiders suggest that in August, VW ran a competitive evaluation in a large southern German city, pitting Wayve against Nvidia and about a dozen other autonomous driving software providers. Wayve’s offering reportedly impressed VW both technically and financially.
Time is of the essence for Volkswagen. Advanced driver assistants capable of safely changing lanes in European cities and navigating door-to-door with minimal driver intervention are becoming increasingly common. While Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” is already licensed in the Netherlands and Czech Republic-and is currently being evaluated by Germany’s Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA)-Wayve is also relying on an end-to-end AI system, trained on massive datasets, similar to Tesla’s approach. Furthermore, the system is designed to operate more like a human driver compared to approaches used by VW’s previous partners.
This new European AI alliance involving the British company is set to replace the partnership between VW’s in-house software division, Cariad, and auto supplier Bosch, which VW had terminated in June. Despite the shift, the early favor given to Wayve is a positive signal for Cariad. The startup will only supply the AI software to VW’s own developers, which Cariad will integrate into the existing technical solution that includes semiconductors, sensors, and software-the solution previously developed with Bosch. One executive stated that if VW had bought the complete autonomous system from Nvidia, “1,000 people at Cariad would no longer have had a job.”
Audi’s purchasing department is now expected to negotiate a contract with the British firm. This has caused some unease within the group, as Audi CEO Gernot Döllner is known to be a proponent of the Nvidia option and a critic of Cariad. Nevertheless, he is expected to play a central role in the partnership with Wayve, as competitive driver assistance remains a decisive factor for Audi when competing against BMW and Mercedes.
