In its quest to make the development of autonomous driving easier and faster, Volkswagen is partnering with Microsoft to use its cloud technology.
By using Microsoft Azure, VW says it will make handling the massive amounts of data that go into developing autonomous driving systems.
With petabytes of data being collected on the road (from weather and obstacles to driver behavior and more) the need for computational power on a massive scale is real. The data is especially important in teaching the machine learning algorithms that will make autonomous vehicles possible.
“By combining our comprehensive expertise in the development of connected driving solutions with Microsoft’s cloud and software engineering know-how, we will accelerate the delivery of safe and comfortable mobility services,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of VW’s Car.Software organization.
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The hope is to get everything Car.Software does, from computing to data processing to machine learning on one platform. That, says VW, will make its job much easier.
“As we transform Volkswagen Group into a digital mobility provider, we are looking to continuously increase the efficiency of our software development,” said Hilgenberg. “We are building the Automated Driving Platform with Microsoft to simplify our developers’ work through one scalable and data-based engineering environment.”
Volkswagen and Microsoft have been working together since 2018. With the automaker’s Automotive Cloud team established in Seattle, the two have been working together to try and get VW’s connected test fleets on the road this year.
“This is the next evolution of our foundational work with the Volkswagen Group to enhance their transformation as a software-driven mobility provider,” said Scott Guthrie, executive VP, Cloud + AI at Microsoft. “The power of Microsoft Azure and its compute, data, and AI capabilities will enable Volkswagen to deliver secure and reliable automated driving solutions to their customers faster.”
