DPA
“We need a counterbalance in the US”: Ford CEO Jim Hackett (r) and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess know each other well, they agreed at the beginning of the year, together to develop vans and mid-sized pick-ups
The speculation about a close cooperation of Volkswagen and ford Autonomous driving and electric car technology have been around for some time. Last February, this had “Wall Street Journal” reports that Wolfsburg are willing to invest up to two billion dollars in the robot car company Argo AI.
After the announcement on Wednesday Departure of Volkswagen at the start-up Aurora, which wants to cooperate in the future with Fiat Chrysler, condenses the references to a co-operation of Ford and VW in this capital-intensive future field. The talks between VW and Ford on cooperation in electric cars and autonomous driving would be “close to completion,” said VW CEO Herbert Diess on Thursday in front of 500 executives of the group. The two carmakers were close to an agreement, the business agency had Bloomberg previously citing that executive meeting reported.
VW strongly influenced Chinese – and too weak in the US
Already in January, Volkswagen and Ford had on the joint development of vans and pickups agreed, Volkswagen is in the pending pact to save costs and economies of scale.
Diess now told executives that Volkswagen needed to expand its hitherto weak position in the US. This applies in particular in times of threatening global trade conflicts. “Today, we are de facto a very strongly Chinese-dominated company,” Diess told his managers. “For this we need a counterweight in the US.”
Volkswagen saw itself in China, where the VW brand sells half of its cars, recently faced with declining sales due to growing trade tensions and tighter emission regulations. Conversely, sales of electric cars are growing significantly in the world’s largest car market. VW is taking this development into account and, together with its Chinese partners JAC, SAIC and FAW, is establishing factories for electric cars at three locations or converting production to e-cars
Ford and VW want to attack Google and General Motors
According to Bloomberg, the deal between Volkswagen and Ford could be announced as early as the beginning of July and is likely to be linked to high Wolfsburg investment in the US. However, according to the report Details Dies did not mention that.
The aspired partnership will be able to record it with Google’s robotic car subsidiary Waymo and the taken over by General Motors start-up Cruise, were, according to Bloomberg familiar with the talks familiar people convinced.
The Autonomous driving is considered the key technology of the future – not least because it could be used to operate lucrative Robotaxi services. Tesla boss Elon Musk, for example, is convinced that the value of the electric car builder with the autonomous driving around Could increase many times,
Most advanced with the development of robotic car technology is currently Waymo, which is already gathering initial experience with a Robotaxi fleet in Arizona. But also the car brokers Uber and Apple are working on robot car technology and software for Autonomous driving,