Chinese Companies Partner For Self-Driving Passenger Cars

Chinese electric car startup Nio Inc and Intel Corp’s self-driving car technology firm Mobileye agreed to partner for them to develop self-driving cars in China and soon all the countries.

Under the agreement, Nio will manufacture and produce at mass scale a self-driving system designed by Mobileye, which will be integrated into Nio’s electric-vehicle consumer lines, as well as Mobileye’s driverless ride-hailing services.

The self-driving kit provided by Israel-based Mobileye includes the vision processing chip, camera, radar and lidar sensors, as well as safety and mapping software.

Nio will also develop a version of self-driving electric vehicles that Mobileye will deploy as robotaxis for ride-hailing services in global markets.No financial details of the partnership were disclosed. The release is planned for 2020

Manufacturers and suppliers are increasingly skeptical about the speed of adoption of fully automated self-driving systems, because of their high cost, complexity, and regulatory hurdles.

They have begun focusing on deploying more advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), which share components, but cost much less and can generate much-needed revenue to help defray the cost of developing full self-driving systems.

The partnership is aimed at producing self-driving cars and not competing with giant EV manufactures.