Mobileye, an Intel Company, will start manufacturing a “fleet of fully autonomous (level 4 SAE) vehicles for testing in the United States, Israel and Europe.” They will be deployed later this year and will grow to over 100 vehicles.
Geographic diversity is key to implementing Mobileye’s new automobile fleet, since different regions have various driving styles, different road conditions and signage. By testing and training the vehicles in varying locations, these autonomous vehicles can be deployed anywhere.
“Building cars and testing them in real-world conditions provides immediate feedback and will accelerate delivery of technologies and solutions for highly and fully autonomous vehicles,” said Amnon Shashua, soon-to-be senior vice president of Intel Corporation and future CEO/CTO of Mobileye.
Proprietary Mobileye technology will help complete a “car-to-cloud” system which includes computer vision, sensing, fusion, mapping and driving policy, Intel’s leading open compute platforms and expertise in data center and 5G communication technologies.
The combined effort of the two companies will undoubtedly, “almost immediately” produce a standalone fleet of test vehicles.” Another result of this hybrid solution is it will be “demonstrated to current and prospective customers in a real-world landscape, and also serve as a base to interact directly with regulators.” It will also introduce mapping and safety validation “which are both geared toward scalability.”
Customers are already are the biggest winners in this scenario according to Shashua:
“Our customers will benefit from our ability to use this fleet to accelerate our technology development. We want to enable automakers to deliver driverless cars faster while reducing costs – data we collect will save our customers significant costs.”
