Through the partnership, Cruise will leverage Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to commercialise its autonomous vehicle solutions at scale. Microsoft will benefit from Cruise’s industry expertise to drive its own product innovation and to continue serving other transportation companies around the world.

“Our mission to bring safer, better, and more affordable transportation to everyone isn’t just a tech race – it’s also a trust race,” said Dan Ammann, Cruise CEO. “Microsoft, as the gold standard in the trustworthy democratisation of technology, will be a force multiplier for us as we commercialise our fleet of self-driving, all-electric, shared vehicles.”  

The GM corporation will also work with Microsoft to drive digitisation initiatives and explore opportunities to streamline its operations.

“Advances in digital technology are redefining every aspect of our work and life, including how we move people and goods,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. “As Cruise and GMs preferred cloud, we will apply the power of Azure to help them scale and make autonomous transportation mainstream.”

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Uber will hand over the team and the technology of its Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), while investing $400m in Aurora as part of a strategic partnership. This investment will also see Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi join the Aurora board.

“By adding the people and technology of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group to the incredible group we’ve already assembled at Aurora, we’re shifting the landscape of the automated vehicle space,” said Chris Urmson, Co-founder and CEO of Aurora. “With the addition of ATG, Aurora will have an incredibly strong team and technology, a clear path to several markets, and the resources to deliver. Simply put, Aurora will be the company best positioned to deliver the self-driving products necessary to make transportation and logistics safer, more accessible, and less expensive.”

Aurora, founded in 2017, will look to use the acquisition to ‘accelerate’ its goal of bringing autonomous vehicles to the market, with its initial focus on self-driving trucks. The company is currently building the ‘Aurora Driver’, which is a platform aimed at bringing together software, hardware, and data services to operate a range of vehicles across various applications.

“Few technologies hold as much promise to improve people’s lives with safe, accessible, and environmentally friendly transportation as self-driving vehicles. For the last five years, our phenomenal team at ATG has been at the forefront of this effort—and in joining forces with Aurora, they are now in pole position to deliver on that promise even faster,” said Khosrowshahi. “I’m looking forward to working with Chris, and to bringing the Aurora Driver to the Uber network in the years ahead.”

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The Yandex Self Driving Group (Yandex SDG) will gain an $150m cash injection from Yandex, $100m in the form of equity and $50m coming in the form of a convertible loan. Yandex will own 73 per cent of the company, while Uber gets 19 per cent and the remaining eight per cent goes to Yandex SDG management and employees.

“We are excited to increase our stake in this strategically important part of our business,” said Arkady Volozh, Chief Executive Officer of Yandex. “In just a short period of time, we have achieved breakthrough results in autonomous driving. We firmly believe in the future of autonomous mobility as a safe and cost-effective form of transportation with a vast addressable market. The additional capital that we are investing in SDG will allow it to continue to pursue the R&D and productisation of autonomous mobility.”

Yandex SDG currently has a fleet of 130 autonomous vehicles, which have self-driven over 4m miles across Russia, Israel, and the US. To date, as the latest deal is subject the usual regulatory processes, Yandex has invested around $65m into its autonomous project.

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Working from Greenwich and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, the lab is comprised of experts from TRL, DG Cities, Cisco, and Loughborough University. Those involved claim it is the ‘most advanced driverless testbed in the world’.

According to O2’s own research, a 5G road management system could reduce the time drivers spend in traffic by 10 per cent, save the economy £880m a year, and reduce CO2 emissions by 370,000 metric tonnes a year.

“At O2 we’re determined to help businesses of all sizes access the potential of 5G mobile technology,” said Brendan O’Reilly, chief technology officer at O2. “We know that by powering the transport sector we can make a real difference to consumers by reducing traffic congestion, making journeys safer and faster.

“We’re excited to be working with the teams at the Smart Mobility Living Lab, who are driving forward our understanding how this next generation technology will fundamentally change the fabric of the cities in which we live and work as well as creating entirely new ways to travel.”

Earlier this year, O2 entered into a similar agreement with the AutoAir 5G project, making it the provider of 5G connectivity for self-driving vehicle testing at the Millbrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire. It followed this up a couple of months later by inking a deal with the European Space Agency to support a connected and autonomous vehicle project dubbed ‘Project Darwin’.

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Hyundai Motor Group and Aptiv, an eco-conscious technology company, are coming together to form an autonomous driving joint venture. As part of the program, both groups will design, develop, and commercialize SAE Level 4 and 5 self-driving technology. Beginning in 2020, the joint venture will start testing fully driverless cars, and by 2022, the venture aims to have a production-ready self-driving platform available for robotaxi providers, fleet operators, and vehicle manufacturers.

Both Aptiv and Hyundai will split ownership of the joint venture 50/50, which is valued at a total of $4bn. Aptiv says the company will be assigning 700 employees to the joint venture, along with contributing autonomous driving technology and intellectual property. Hyundai Motor Group – which includes Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors and Hyundai Mobis – will be adding $1.6bn in cash at closing, and an additional $0.4bn in vehicle engineering services, R&D resources, and intellectual property.

“This partnership further strengthens Aptiv’s industry-leading capabilities in the development of advanced driver assistance systems, vehicle connectivity solutions, and Smart Vehicle Architecture,” said Kevin Clark, president and chief executive officer, Aptiv. “Hyundai Motor Group’s cutting-edge engineering and R&D capabilities make them our partner of choice to advance the development of a production-ready autonomous platform.”

“The new joint venture marks the start of a journey with Aptiv toward our common goal of commercializing autonomous driving,” said Euisun Chung, executive vice chairman, Hyundai Motor Group. “The combined capabilities of Aptiv, a leading global technology company, and our Group, a global OEM, will create invaluable synergy to lead the autonomous driving landscape.”

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Food delivery platform DoorDash has announced its acquisition of Scotty Labs, a teleoperations company that is currently developing the technology needed for people to remotely control autonomous vehicles. More details of the deal, including how much DoorDash paid, have not been released so far.

Scotty Labs was founded by two immigrants in Silicon Valley 10 years ago, and quickly gained a diverse team of workers and financial backing from notable investors. Scotty’s current team hails experience from Apple, SRI International, Cruise Automation, Google, and NASA.

“Our core belief at Scotty has always been that Autonomy + Remote Assistance will be the future of logistics. We have intentionally always considered ourselves to be the anti-hype company and focused intensely on developing core infrastructure and algorithms, with a healthy degree of human intelligence, to ensure the safe deployment of autonomous vehicles,” said Tobenna Arodiogbu, Scotty Labs CEO.

As of right now, there have been no clear motives for the acquisition. Speculation has already begun as to what DoorDash plans to do with technology that can remotely control self-driving cars, such as deploying autonomous food delivery vehicles. DoorDash had previously hired the co-founders of Lvl5, which developed technology to create high-resolution maps for self-driving cars.

Arodiogbu continued, “We’ll share more updates in the near future but for now, we’re really excited to be part of the amazing DoorDash family and looking forward to building something magical together. Thank you all for tuning in to the journey so far.”

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Volkswagen’s investment will include $1bn in capital and the contribution of its autonomous intelligent driving (AID) company, valued at $1.6bn. Together, the two car manufacturers will hold equal stakes in Argo, with the remainder of the company’s equity set aside for employees.

“While Ford and Volkswagen remain independent and fiercely competitive in the marketplace, teaming up and working with Argo AI on this important technology allows us to deliver unmatched capability, scale and geographic reach,” said Jim Hackett, Ford president and CEO. “Unlocking the synergies across a range of areas allows us to showcase the power of our global alliance in this era of smart vehicles for a smart world.”

Working with Ford and Volkswagen, Argo has plans to commercially deploy its self-driving system (SDS) in Europe and the US. The carmakers will independently integrate the Argo SDS into purpose-built vehicles.

The partnership between Ford and Volkswagen, which is independent of the Argo investment, will also see Ford become the first other automaker to use Volkswagen’s dedicate electric vehicle architecture and Modular Electric Toolkit (MEB), eyeing the release of a high-volume zero-emission vehicle in Europe by 2023.

Ford aims to deliver more than 600,000 European vehicles using MEB architecture over six years. The use of Volkswagen’s MEB architecture is part of Ford’s more than $11.5bn investment in electric vehicles around the world.

“Looking ahead, even more customers and the environment will benefit from Volkswagen’s industry-leading EV architecture. Our global alliance is beginning to demonstrate even greater promise, and we are continuing to look at other areas on which we might collaborate,” said Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess. “Scaling our MEB drives down development costs for zero-emissions vehicles, allowing for a broader and faster global adoption of electric vehicles. This improves the positions of both companies through greater capital efficiency, further growth and improved competitiveness.”

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All technologies developed will be done so up to SAE Level 4, which cater to full self-driving with no human intervention required. The focus will be on developing ‘scalable architecture’ for self-driving systems as well as functions and software. They will also develop a joint data centre for data storage.

The non-exclusive partnership, which is open to other OEMs and technology partners, will bring more than 1,200 specialists together in mixed teams at locations including the BMW Group Autonomous Driving Campus in Unterschleissheim, the Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre in Sindelfingen, and the Daimler Testing and Technology Centre in Immendingen.

The duo will also look to extend their partnership to higher levels of automated driving urban areas and city centres, though this isn’t part of their initial agreement.

Individually, BMW is currently developing its iNext vehicle line, which feature Level 3 automation and are due to go into production in 2021. At the same time, BMW says it will begin to enable Level 4 automation on pilot projects.

Daimler is working on its first Level 4 and 5 self-driving pilot programme with Bosch in urban environments in San José, California. The aim is to launch later this year.

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The four-year trial programme, dubbed ‘Project Darwin’, will trial technology and end-to-end connectivity solutions, including 5G and satellite communications, with an eye on creating a new CAV industry vertical.

It brings together Oxford and Glasgow Universities, Spanish satellite operator Hispasat, self-driving startups, and the Darwin Innovation Group Oxford. The group will begin work on the design and definition phase next month at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. The hope is to unveil the first ‘proof of concepts’ from 2020.

“Project Darwin is an important piece of the connected and autonomous vehicle puzzle,” said Derek McManus, O2 COO. “The research taking place at Harwell during the next four years will be vital in the creation of new transport ecosystems for the UK public and the companies that will offer these services. Our approach to this project is part of our wider strategy to collaborate with British businesses, partners and start-ups to unlock the possibilities of 5G for customers and wider UK economy.”

The project has also received backing from the UK government to launch an ARTES ‘partner study’ alongside it. This will help to define the different elements needed to deliver the larger programme.

“This new partnership between Government and industry will build on our world-leading reputation in the development and manufacture of satellites even further, to bring together two of the UK’s great strengths – automotive and space,” said business secretary Greg Clark. “Putting us at the forefront of the next generation of self-driving cars of tomorrow – a key ambition in our modern Industrial Strategy.”

A couple of months ago, O2 penned a deal with the AutoAir 5G project which will see it be the public and private network provider of 5G connectivity for autonomous vehicle testing at the MillBrook Proving Ground in Bedfordshire.

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The trio will look to research ‘commercial, legal, and regulatory issues’ surrounding autonomous transportation-as-a-service offerings in France and Japan.

“This is an ideal opportunity for Waymo to bring our autonomous technology to a global stage, with an innovative partner,” said John Krafcik, Waymo CEO. “With the Alliance’s international reach and scale, our Waymo Driver can deliver transformational mobility solutions to safely serve riders and commercial deliveries in France, Japan, and other countries.”

Waymo has already formed similar partnerships with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Jaguar Land Rover. However, this is the car unit’s biggest deal yet with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance achieving combined global sales of 10.8m vehicles in 2018.

“We believe this partnership will accelerate our commitment to deliver new shared mobility services and benefit the automobile ecosystems by placing us at the forefront of driverless mobility new business streams in our key strategic markets,” said Thierry Bolloré, Groupe Renault CEO.

Hiroto Saikawa, president and CEO of Nissan, added: “Our expertise in the global automotive industry and expertise in strategic partnership will enable us to explore opportunities to grow our portfolio and deliver new value to customers with Waymo, the recognised leader in this space.”

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