Volkswagen Group took a significant step toward strengthening its automated driving software development this week by announcing a new partnership with Microsoft. The deal enables VW’s software company, which it calls the Car.Software Organisation, to build a cloud-based Automated Driving Platform (ADP) on the Microsoft Azure cloud, which VW claims will increase its development efficiency around ADAS (advanced driver assistance system) and AD (automated driving) functions across all Group brands.
“As we transform Volkswagen Group into a digital mobility provider, we are looking to continuously increase the efficiency of our software development,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of the Car.Software Organisation. “We are building the Automated Driving Platform with Microsoft to simplify our developers’ work through one scalable and data-based engineering environment. 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.”
This initiative is related to VW’s announced increase in its in-house vehicle software development, from 10% today to 60% by 2025. Backed by a new €27 billion investment, VW said its Car.Software Organisation will play a key role in the transformation of the Volkswagen Group towards a software-driven mobility provider.
“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 Vice President, 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.”
In an interview posted on the VW news website, Hilgenberg described ADP and its impact on the software development process.
“ADP is a cloud platform tailored to the development of connected, assisted, and automated driving functions,” said Hilgenberg. “Basically, the platform is a customized digital “tool” for our software developers. The development of automated driving and parking functions is highly complex. And it happens iteratively, the systems are continuously learning. Data from a wide range of scenarios play a very decisive role in these development and learning processes. These include environment data, vehicle data, and system data. The consistent storage and intelligent processing of all this data is the basis for efficient and sustainable development and thus for safe and innovative customer functions. For ADP, the focus is to create one process environment with agile methods and integrated digital tools.”
The new relationship between VW and Microsoft builds on a strategic partnership between the two companies initiated in 2018, which produced the Volkswagen Automotive Cloud (VW.AC). Managed by a VW engineering team in Seattle, the solution is focused on integrating all the digital services and mobility offerings across the Group brands and models in the future. It 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 over-the-air vehicle updates—a key differentiator for Tesla—and new features independently of the vehicle hardware to continuously improve the customer experience.
The first VW.AC connected test fleets are expected to hit the road in 2021. Production rollout is planned for 2022. With VW.AC, the AD and ADAS functions developed on top of ADP will be tested, deployed, and operated across the Group’s vehicle fleet.
VW’s planned testing is sure to generate a tremendous amount of data. Hilgenberg went on to describe the company’s plan for collecting and using that data.
“An important role is played by the data from our test vehicles, with which we complete quite a few real test drives on the road,” said Hilgenberg. “The second important pillar is virtual kilometers driven, i.e. simulated driving situations. Both have long been an integral part of our development processes. In the future, we will pool the data from all physical and virtual kilometers driven to make use of them even more efficiently.
“In addition to this, we want to expand the pool to include data from the real vehicle fleet. Our customers will then be able to voluntarily share certain data for development purposes—anonymized and according to our high standards concerning data security. This will enable us to exploit economies of scale and create a database that systematically supports ‘learning from kilometers driven.’ In turn, the customer ultimately benefits from an ever better driving experience.”
