This partnership brings the two companies together with the aim of bringing self-driving electric vehicles to cities as mobility fleets for Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) services.

In its future program "Together - Strategy 2025", Volkswagen has defined the goal of being a leader in autonomous driving with the development of a self-driving system (SDS). Johann Jungwirth, Chief Digital Officer of the Group, says: "Our vision is 'mobility for everyone, at the touch of a button'. This means that we want to offer mobility for everyone around the world. Individual mobility also for children, the elderly, the sick and the blind. Users can then use our mobility app or the intelligent digital assistant to call a self-driving electric vehicle and be conveniently taken from door to door. Or they can press the Volkswagen OneButton with integrated GPS, cellular and compass for maximum convenience. Working with Aurora, as a self-driving system development team, is a huge leap forward for us. Our ambition is to create mobility solutions through MaaS services that customers are passionate about using because they are tailored to people - with the highest safety requirements, the best user experience and digital intelligence."

Individual mobility of the future

Self-driving system technology will be at the heart of individual mobility in the future. And with Aurora, the Volkswagen Group gains access to an experienced and world-leading team of developers of software and hardware for driverless vehicles and mobility services. As soon as the SDS has reached the necessary level of maturity and safety standard in the first cities, it can be integrated into the various product categories via the Group brands: from self-driving pods such as Sedric to self-driving shuttles or mobile packing stations through to trucks without cabs.

Over the past six months, Volkswagen specialists have been working closely and intensively with Aurora experts to integrate the Aurora SDS, including sensors, hardware and software with machine learning and artificial intelligence, into Volkswagen Group platforms.

Faster implementation through partnerships

Chris Urmson, CEO of Aurora, says: "Our priority is to make self-driving vehicles a reality - safely, quickly and widely accessible. And we know that we can achieve this faster by partnering with innovative automotive companies like the Volkswagen Group. Together, we will bring self-driving vehicles to market at scale." Based in Palo Alto and Pittsburgh, the US company designs and develops self-driving system technology and partners with automotive companies. Aurora is working to solve today's most complex AI, automation and engineering challenges. am