Volkswagen Negotiating Deal To Acquire Huawei's Autonomous Driving Unit: Details

As the competition in the autonomous driving space heats up, German automaker Volkswagen is in talks with Chinese tech giant Huawei to acquire its autonomous driving unit.

Volkswagen Negotiating To Acquire Huawei's Autonomous Driving Unit/Getty

New Delhi: As the competition in the autonomous driving space heats up, German automaker Volkswagen is in talks with Chinese tech giant Huawei to acquire its autonomous driving unit, the media has reported. Automakers have started to invest millions of dollars in autonomous driving technology, in a bid to take a lead. 

According to Volkswagen Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess, he expects the car industry to see widespread autonomous driving within 25 years and that the carmaker was pursuing new partnerships to increase its self-sufficiency in software, said a report by news agency Reuters. According to Manager Magazin, the deal between Huawei and Volkswagen is being negotiated for the past few months.

Volkswagen promises "unconventional solutions" for its new market China and "maybe taking over a Huawei subsidiary will help. The talks are ongoing. Huawei and VW China did not immediately comment on the report. The Chinese conglomerate aims to develop driverless-car technology by 2025. Huawei believes that driverless vehicles will bring huge benefits to society.

It has applied its industry-leading chips, platform-level engineering capabilities, and complete development diagnostic tool-chain to create the Mobile Data Centres (MDC) on wheels, offering a true car brain. Together with car manufacturers, Huawei will apply its AI capabilities to steer the advancement of autonomous driving technology into the fast lane.

Huawei's smart car unit had plans to spend $1 billion on research and development for the year 2021. The Huawei MDC is also an open platform that offers components-as-a-service, interface standardization and development tools.