Volkswagen teams up with Microsoft to accelerate self-driving development

Volkswagen Group further strengthens its capabilities in the development of Automated Driving (AD) solutions with its software company Car.Software Organisation collaborating with Microsoft to build a cloud-based Automated Driving Platform (ADP) on Microsoft Azure, leveraging its computing and data capabilities with the goal of delivering reliable and safe automated driving experiences even faster and on a global scale.

With the Automated Driving Platform running on Azure, Car.Software Organisation will increase the efficiency of the development of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and AD functions for passenger cars across Volkswagen Group brands. Volkswagen and Microsoft have been strategic partners on the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud since 2018, which will span all of Volkswagen's future digital services and mobility offerings.

ADAS and automated driving vehicles can help improve passenger safety while reducing congestion and making mobility even more comfortable. Building these solutions requires large-scale computational capabilities.

Petabytes of data from road and weather conditions to obstacle detection and driver behaviour need to be managed every day for the training, simulation and validation of AD functions. Machine learning algorithms that learn from billions of real and simulated miles driven are key to connected driving experiences.

Car.Software Organisation will address these challenges together with Microsoft by simplifying the developer experience and leveraging the 'learnings from miles driven' through one database comprising real traffic data from Volkswagen Group's vehicles as well as simulation data.

Microsoft Azure compute, data and machine learning services as well as Microsoft's know-how in agile software development will enable one development environment for Car.Software Organisation's developers globally. ADP will help reduce the development cycles from months to weeks and efficiently manage the huge amount of data.

The companies will start working on ADP immediately and are looking to continuously expand the functional scope of the development platform. Both companies intend to enable technology partners to build tools and services that integrate with the platform to enhance the creation of AD and ADAS solutions.

Volkswagen Group is driving forward the digitalisation of the car rapidly. By 2025, it will invest around $42.9 billion in digitalisation, also with the aim of increasing the proportion of in-house development of software in the car to 60% from 10% today.

Founded in 2020, the Car.Software Organisation plays a key role in the transformation of the Volkswagen Group towards a software-driven mobility provider. It bundles and continuously expands the Group's software competencies, including the development of high-performance driving functions for passenger cars that will be integrated into future models of Volkswagen Group's brands.

Since 2018, Volkswagen and Microsoft have been collaborating on the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud, which is focused on integrating all the digital services and mobility offerings across the Group brands and models in the future.

The Volkswagen Automotive Cloud engineering team has enabled data to be exchanged between the vehicles and the cloud through Azure edge services. The cloud connectivity is also enabling Volkswagen to deliver vehicle updates and new features independently of the vehicle hardware to continuously improve the customer experience.

The first test fleets connected to the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud are expected to hit the road in 2021, and production rollout is planned for 2022. Car.Software Organisation will integrate the Automated Driving Platform and Volkswagen Automotive Cloud as it moves toward further integrating their software solutions, tools and methods to empower its engineering teams, customers, and partners globally.

With the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud, the AD and ADAS functions developed on top of the Automated Driving Platform can be tested, deployed and operated across the Volkswagen Group's vehicle fleet.