The company aims to have autonomous vehicles everywhere by 2030.
Until then, it wants to implement Robotaxis in Hamburg in 2025.
Other automakers are backing off of some autonomous vehicle projects at the moment.
The CEO of Volkswagen Group’s commercial vehicles division, Thomas Schafer, believes that the company’s autonomous vehicles will be operating on a large scale around the world by 2030 according to comments he made in an interview with Autocar.
The executive says that the technology is already available and that VW cars are already driving autonomously in Hamburg and Munich, Germany.
This news is somewhat surprising since Argo AI, an autonomous driving company backed by Ford and Volkswagen itself folded only about a month ago due to the companies pulling back their investment into the project.
The German automaker claims this was done in a move to consolidate its partnerships ahead of the move to autonomous driving, which will now involve the company working with Bosh to develop systems to be used around the world except China, where VW’s own Cariad software branch will work on the project.
Despite Cariad and Volkswagen having already had to postpone the introduction of new models such as the Porsche Macan EV and the Audi Q6 e-tron due to software-related backlogs, the company still thinks it is on track to have a mainstream presence on the global autonomous vehicle scene by 2030.
Actually, Volkswagen wants to have customers be able to hail a ride with a driverless ID.Buzz as soon as 2025 in the streets of Hamburg.
According to Schafer, legislation is the largest roadblock in the mass roll-out of autonomous vehicles since laws vary from country to country and even sometimes from state to state, as is the case in the United States.
With the simultaneous push towards electrification that forces automakers to invest billions into the development of new models in order to remain competitive, autonomous driving seems to have taken a backseat in the last few months, but apparently not at Volkswagen.
This is because the company believes it needs to be one of the first established automakers to propose fully autonomous vehicles in order to open up new business opportunities before its rivals get there.
Source: Autocar
