Volkswagen Group’s ambitions in highly automated and autonomous vehicles have been cooled by setbacks.
Those included premium subsidiary Audi abandoning plans to turn on Level 3 conditional autonomy in the A8 flagship sedan and the group’s inability to create a standard for the technology together with partners.
In addition, rivals such as Tesla, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and BMW are pressing ahead with much greater speed than Europe’s largest automaker.
Honda said in March that in Japan, it will sell a limited batch of its flagship Legend sedan equipped with Sensing Elite Level 3 autonomous driving technology that enables vehicles to navigate congested highways.
When Traffic Jam Pilot is activated in the system, a driver can watch movies or use the navigation on the screen, helping to mitigate fatigue and stress when driving in heavy traffic, Honda said in a statement.
Mercedes hopes to follow Honda sometime in the second half of 2021 with an eyes-off Level 3 system in the S-Class flagship sedan. In addition, sources say Mercedes is likely to eventually include the solution in the full-electric EQS.
Meanwhile, BMW is expected to offer a similar system in its iX electric crossover, although it has backed away from including it when the vehicle launches in November.
To avoid being left behind, VW Group invested in self-driving startup Argo AI together with Ford Motor Co. last year.
Today, the group is following a two-track approach for the technology: Audi will concentrate on solutions for private vehicles with VW Group’s vehicle software unit, Cariad, and VW brand’s light commercial vehicles business will develop a derivative of the ID Buzz electric van for robotaxi fleets. The self-driving Buzz will utilize the technology developed by Argo AI.
Here is a breakdown of where the group’s brands stand in their automated driving efforts.
When it launched in 2017, the fourth-generation A8 luxury sedan was touted to be the world’s first car that would have Level 3 capabilities, promising a Traffic Jam Pilot that could assume full control of the vehicle under certain conditions on the highway. That didn’t happen because of regulatory and legal concerns. Audi has since avoided announcing any ambitious timetable for a technology it once hoped to lead.
Last year, Audi introduced its Project Artemis strategy to focus on new technologies for electric and highly automated driving. Under that initiative, VW plans to build its own software stack for vehicles starting in 2024.
The first Artemis car — code-named Landjet — will be assembled at a factory in Hanover, Germany, before the technology is scaled up two years later with a more affordable VW-branded electric car out of Wolfsburg, Germany.
When the Artemis initiative was launched last May, Audi indicated the car would feature advanced technologies, including an undefined level of highly automated driving, when it debuted in 2024.
Audi CEO Markus Duesmann says the vehicle will offer an operating system with the software foundation required for such an intelligent vehicle, but he stopped short of promising to bring the capability in the Landjet — at least when it first launches.
“We use new technologies responsibly. This means that we will only roll out fully automated driving functions when they are sufficiently tested and safe,” he told reporters at the automaker’s annual results conference in March.
The light commercial vehicles team plans to begin field-testing the Argo AI self-driving system on public streets in Munich this year.
In 2022, the ID Buzz will go into series production in Hanover. At that point, VW will start testing “closed user groups,” likely with help from VW Group’s mobility service provider, Moia.
“This will intensify in 2023,” VW Group Digital Car & Services board member Christian Senger told reporters in March.
Development of the robotaxi service is part of the group’s five-year investment of €27 billion ($32.4 billion) in digital applications that include automated and autonomous driving. The group has doubled its planned expenditure in software to cut into Tesla’s lead.
To take advantage of the potential offered by autonomous driving, VW’s vans business has bundled its mobility-as-a-service passenger operation and its transport-as-a-service cargo operation into a new unit with about 100 employees, excluding people who perform development work for the division.
Eventually, the unit will report financial figures; it is expected to make a material contribution to revenue and earnings in the midterm.
“In the beginning, however, there will be considerable investment costs,” VW Commercial Vehicles CEO Carsten Intra said in March.
The core VW brand said it aims to democratize automated driving functions for private car owners. This should begin with the Trinity, a technological flagship to be built in Wolfsburg and launched in 2026.
The car will be designed with Level 4 full autonomous driving in mind because of its neural network that is capable of learning. (This is reminiscent of Tesla, which is already working on a supercomputer called Dojo designed to train neural networks.)
But with development of the Trinity only just beginning and the legal framework in most jurisdictions still quite vague, VW is only going so far as to promise Level 2 Plus autonomy. This is essentially a hands-off system that should mimic highly automated driving, with the distinction that liability is not transferred to the manufacturer from the driver.
The luxury brand is mulling when and how it might offer a Level 3 system.
Despite an affluent customer group that could easily afford the technology, the sports car maker can take a wait-and-see approach because people who buy its vehicles like to do the driving themselves.
Nevertheless, development chief Michael Steiner said it would be sensible to consider features such as Traffic Jam Pilot to take over in stop-and-go traffic, when there is no driving experience to preserve.
Another option is to offer automated valet parking, in which a driver exits a vehicle at the entrance of a parking garage and the vehicle steers itself into a space.
“It’s not priority No. 1, but we do want to be a fast follower and plan to offer such a system once the conditions are financially reasonable,” Steiner told Automotive News Europe.
He declined to provide a year when the solution would debut or hint at the model that would get it. “We want to convince people with our products,” Steiner said, “not our announcements.”