Fiat Chrysler joins the BMW-Intel driverless club
The market for such self-driving cabs could be worth €1.7tn by 2030, according to consultants McKinsey, as younger customers abandon car ownership in favour of a pay-per-use mobility service.
Fiat Chrysler said it plans to put autonomous car technology into production by 2021, matching a timeframe shared by rival companies who are also developing self-driving cars.
BMW and its partners Intel and Mobileye said Fiat would bring engineering and other expertise to the deal, paving the way to creating an industry-wide autonomous car platform which other carmakers could adopt.
Carmakers are seeking alliances to share the high costs of developing autonomous cars, which according to consulting firm Frost & Sullivan will make up about 10% to 15% of vehicles in Europe by 2030.
Fiat chief executive Sergio Marchionne cited the “synergies and economies of scale” possible in joining the alliance.
Mr Marchionne has long argued that carmakers must merge in order to survive the prohibitively high costs of making more technologically advanced vehicles.
In April, he said Fiat was looking for new partners in self-driving development because “banking all of our solutions on one possible outcome is going to be disastrous”.
Fiat is also part of a separate alliance with Google-owner Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo to develop self-driving cars based on Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans.
Autonomous cars will allow carmakers to disrupt the taxi market which is run by fleet operators and ride-hailing firms. Without having to pay drivers, ride-hailing could become more cost effective and compete against other forms of transport including buses.
Ride-hailing services, which make up around 33% of the global taxi market, could grow eightfold to €243bn by 2030, once autonomous robotaxis are in operation, according to Goldman Sachs.
Car suppliers Delphi Automotive and Continental have also joined the BMW-Intel alliance. The consortium said it was on track to put 40 self-driving test vehicles on the road by the end of 2017, and would learn from the 100 test vehicles to be deployed by Mobileye in the US later this year.
Reuters
