(12 Jul 2019) Volkswagen and Ford announced a new partnership in New York on Friday to develop self-driving car technology.
The German automaker will sink US$2.6 billion into a Pittsburgh autonomous vehicle company that's mostly owned by Ford as part of a broader partnership on electric and self-driving vehicles.
The two automakers will become equal owners of Argo AI, a robocar firm that was majority-owned by Ford, with plans to put autonomous vehicles on the roads in the US and Europe.
The tie-up has been in the works for months and is another in a long string of industry partnerships as auto companies and tech firms try to spread the enormous costs of developing self-driving and electric vehicles.
Also under the deal, Ford will use VW's new modular electric vehicle underpinnings to build zero-emissions vehicles for the European market starting in 2023.
The company hopes to sell 600,000 of them over six years. VW, the world's largest automaker measured by sales, already has invested US$7 billion in the new platform, which it plans to use to build 15 million electric vehicles worldwide in the next decade.
The Ford-VW alliance vaults Argo into one of the highest-valued autonomous vehicle development companies in the world.
It's also another in a series of investments, purchases and partnerships between auto and tech companies as they develop new technology while they are still cranking out vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.
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