Volvo to create company focusing on autonomous driving tech

MANILA: Volvo is zeroing in its focus on autonomous driving technology so much so that the company is creating a new company operational by the third quarter of this year dedicated solely to this task.

This company will be borne out of one-half of autonomous driving software development company Zenuity, which will be split in two parts.

Currently, Zenuity is a joint partnership between Volvo and Voeneer. After its halving, one part will be wholly owned by Volvo, which will focus on self-driving techonology, and the other half stays with Veoneer to develop driver assistance systems.

The move will also shift around the manpower of the Zenuity. Its operations and people based in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Shanghai will be transferred to the new company to be owned by Volvo Cars. The operations and people based in Germany and USA will be transferred to Veoneer.

“The new company will develop safe and advanced autonomous drive software. We believe that in the future there will only be a limited number of global software platforms for autonomous driving. We intend to develop one of these winning platforms,” said Dennis Nobelius, Zenuity’s chief executive.

Volvo is making this move in order to be able to make the next generation of its cars, which will be based on the SPA2 vehicle architecture, have some level of autonomous driving ability.

“Volvo Cars is committed to introduce safe, unsupervised autonomous drive on highways with its next generation of cars. Allowing the new company to fully focus on this development will help us deliver on those ambitions,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive at Volvo Cars.

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