For Volkswagen and Bosch, 2022 has already been a busy year. In a follow-up to the January 18 announcement of a new joint venture between the two German companies focused on European EV battery production, VW’s software subsidiary, Cariad, also announced a new partnership with Bosch to develop partial and highly automated EV software on a standardized platform.

The software developed under this new partnership will be used in all vehicle brands within the VW Group, with the potential to be made available to other OEMs. The joint venture’s first Level 2 hands-free system for urban and freeway driving will launch in 2023, with a planned Level 3 automated highway driving system to follow, as well as a potential Level 4 system.

According to SAE International‘s J3016 Recommended Practice, Level 2 automated driving systems provide steering and brake/acceleration support to the driver, while Level 3 systems provide automated driving in certain conditions while a driver is present. Level 4 driving automation means vehicles do not require human interaction in their operations, instead of intervening in the event of a system failure. Level 4 technology will typically be used in driverless public vehicles such as taxis and busses.

“Automated driving is key to the future of our industry,” said Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of Cariad. “With our cooperation, we’ll strengthen Germany’s reputation for innovativeness. Bosch and Cariad will further enhance their expertise in the development of pioneering technologies. This underscores our ambition to deliver the best possible solutions to our customers as soon as possible.”

“For privately owned vehicles, progress to automated driving happens one step at a time,” said Dr. Markus Heyn, member of the Bosch Board of Management. “At Bosch, we’ve been working successfully on this for many years now. Together with Cariad, we will now be accelerating the market launch of partially and highly automated driving functions across all vehicle classes, thus making them available for everyone. This will make driving on the roads safer and more relaxed. We will be able to offer the solutions we create to our other customers as well, and in this way set new standards.”

Bosch and VW said they will rely on their respective decades of experience in the volume production, scalability, and approval of driving systems, as well as expertise in the areas of software, data-driven development, and artificial intelligence.

At various Bosch and Cariad locations, particularly Stuttgart and Ingolstadt in Germany, more than 1000 associates from the Bosch Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division and Cariad will work together to develop partially and highly automated driving functions.

The focus of the joint venture’s work will be data-driven software development based on information from 360-degree surround sensing. Using AI methods, the companies plan to build an extensive pool of data from real road traffic, with the goal of using it to build a robust and natural design of driving functions.

“The best proving ground for the development of automated driving is road traffic,” said Dr. Mathias Pillin, President of Bosch Cross-Domain Computing Solutions. “With the help of one of the world’s biggest connected vehicle fleets, we will gain access to a huge database. This will allow us to take automated driving systems to a new level. All our customers will be able to benefit from this.

“Together, we can test automated driving functions on a broader scale in actual vehicles and implement them more quickly,” said Dr. Ingo Stürmer, the alliance’s Project Director at Cariad. “Our engineering work will be done jointly, with Bosch and Cariad as one team. There has never been an alliance like this in the automotive industry.”