Intel to Cooperate with NIO ES8 to Test Driverless Taxis Next Year

Mobileye, a self-driving car chip company owned by Intel, will cooperate with Sixt, the largest car rental company in Germany, and technology company Moovit to launch a self-driving taxi service test in Munich, Germany in 2022. The trio plan to promote the venture to European consumers within the next few years, according to a report by Cailian Press on Wednesday.

Intel also announced that that Chinese EV car marker, NIO, would be supplying its ES8 electric SUV as the model participating in this plan. However, neither of the companies gave any details on how long the test plan might last.

Intel said that the test speed of self-driving cars would be up to 130 kilometers per hour, and it was expected that the plan would start commercial operation only after obtaining the approval of regulatory authorities.

Mobileye and NIO have had a long-term strategic partnership. As early as 2019, the two companies reached a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly develop Level 4 self-driving vehicles. In this current partnership agreement, Mobileye will purchase a large number of NIO electric vehicles for its travel services.

More specifically, Mobileye will provide NIO with the design of the self-driving system while NIO will be responsible for the development, integration and mass production of the vehicles.

In recent years, unmanned driving technology has gradually become more mainstream, and many technology giants have entered this field.

Intel first announced its entry into the autonomous vehicle industry in 2019 with the acquisition of Mobileye in the same year.

SEE ALSO: Chinese EV Maker Nio to Begin ES8 Deliveries in Norway This September

In addition to the company’s dominance in the chip industry, Intel has invested heavily in the Internet of Things, cloud computing and artificial intelligence in recent years. As early as 2014, Intel launched a chip for smart hardware, and in the following years, it launched a dedicated chip designed for artificial intelligence, Xeon Phi.

Yang Xu, Corporate Vice President and President of Intel China, predicted that “120 million cars in the world will deploy self-driving technology by 2030, and a quarter of the cars in the world will use driverless technology by 2035.”