Volkswagen bundles driver-assistance development under Audi

Volkswagen is reorganizing the development of driver-assistance systems and automated driving. The planned “OneTeam” unit is set to start in November, according to a report by Automobilwoche, and bring together specialists from Cariad and the group’s brands. Manuel Birke is expected to take charge; at Cariad, he has so far been responsible for driver-assistance technology. In the new structure, he is to report to Audi development chief Rouven Mohr. That gives Audi a central coordination role for these development topics within the group.

Clear responsibilities instead of parallel development

With OneTeam, Volkswagen wants to prevent several brands from developing similar systems separately. Group development chief Werner Tietz justified the reorganization with clearer responsibility under the leadership of the lead brand Audi and the shared use of technological expertise. How the teams will be divided in detail is not yet known. The change follows delays caused by software problems in several projects; the Audi Q6 e-tron, for example, came to market later than planned. The new reporting line is also likely to make clearer who is responsible for progress on shared projects.

External partners remain important

Cariad was originally built with the aim of developing software for several group brands in-house. Volkswagen is now relying more heavily on external partners. The cooperation between Cariad and Bosch on automated driving functions was ended early in July. Cariad is also cutting around 1,000 jobs in Germany. Bosch and Cariad had jointly developed a technology toolkit for driver assistance up to SAE Level 2+, which Volkswagen plans to use in the electric small car ID. Every1. For automated driving at higher SAE levels, the group needs further solutions.

Nvidia is also involved in automated-driving projects. Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles showed the autonomous ID. Buzz AD at GTC in Berlin, using Nvidia’s Hyperion platform with computing hardware and sensor architecture. In addition, Volkswagen, Porsche and Cariad are developing a driving-data platform together with Nvidia, Microsoft Azure and Voxel51, intended to make real traffic situations usable for training and testing automated systems. Nvidia’s contribution includes tools for data preparation and for virtually recreating real driving situations. Which technology will be used in which Volkswagen models remains open; first, the group has to define how OneTeam will work with Audi, Cariad and the other brands.