Sorry Tesla, it looks like your ex is doing just fine: Mobileye, the Israeli software company responsible for many aspects of Tesla’s original Autopilot program, is stepping out with a new partner, BMW. Mobileye and Tesla parted ways in July of last year, but the computer vision and machine learning company quickly found other buyers for its services, despite a dip in its stocks after the split.
On Tuesday, Mobileye signed an agreement to install its data generation and mapping technology in BMW’s cars starting in 2018. The Mobileye tech won’t make BMW’s vehicles autonomous, but it will make them part of a data collection and mapping network that will benefit future self-driving cars.
BMW will be using Mobileye’s mapping software in its cars starting in 2018 to crowd-source high definition maps in real time, according to Reuters. By crowdsourcing the creation of these maps with BMW vehicles, Mobileye is moving towards creating safer autonomous cars faster. High-definition maps are essential for autonomous vehicles, as they serve as redundancy measure to backup the sensors on self-driving cars. The BMW partnership is another sign that Tesla widely-known Autopilot technology won’t be the only highly-autonomous system on the market in a few short years, though other automakers are taking a different approach to building and testing self-driving cars.
Mobileye’s Chief Technology Officer Amnon Shashua scolded Tesla publicly after the two companies split, saying that Tesla had been pushing the technology beyond what was safe.
Since then, Mobileye has been linked to a number of other major automakers. The company signed a similar partnership with Volkswagen on February 13, which plans to use the map software to create new navigation technology for cars as early as 2018.
