Volkswagen to spend $4 billion to build digital businesses, software

Volkswagen is going to invest 3.5 billion euros ($4 billion) by 2025 to construct digital businesses and products consisting of a cloud computing-based platform to link vehicles and customers to offer services like car sharing.

The German automaker stated on Thursday it was focusing on a new software operating system, to be called as “vw.OS”, which will be introduced in VW brand electric vehicles from 2020 onwards.

These new vehicles will have a entirely new electronic architecture designated to help facilitate autonomous driving functions, Volkswagen stated.

In place of having around 70 different sensors and controllers running independently within each vehicle, the new vehicles will connect the various sensors utilizing the new proprietary software operating system.

This how, information collected by a parking sensor could be connected to the steering, brakes, and high-definition maps to permit a car to park itself once an onboard camera spots a free parking space.

Volkswagen stated it was easier to do over-the-air software upgrades for vehicles if the operating system was designed in-house, instead of depending on third-party software provided by the different vendors providing various sensors.

Volkswagen stated it expects to generate around 1 billion euros in sales by 2025 from providing new digital services such as car-sharing, parking and parcel delivery services.