The news this morning that Intel intends to buy Mobileye, two strong partners of Delphi, made it a fantastic way to start the week.
Delphi has established powerful and productive partnerships with both Mobileye and Intel. We have joined forces to deliver the first-to-market, fully autonomous system for our customers by 2019. We call it Centralized Sensing Localization and Planning (CSLP). Even though the name isn’t particularly sexy, the system sure is. We demonstrated CSLP at CES in January in the form of the most complex automated drive ever – including urban and highway driving.
The partner ecosystem necessary to pull off delivering a fully autonomous system can seem rather complicated, so I thought I would spend some time discussing it. When we set out to deliver CSLP by 2019, it was more than a lofty engineering feat - it was more like a moonshot - so we knew we had to assemble a cast of world leaders to pull it off. And that is just what we did.
First, we tapped Mobileye to provide the vision system (cameras and algorithms) as well as a real-time mapping system called REM (Road Experience Management). Then we reached out to Intel to supply their System on a Chip (SoC) to process the massive amount code necessary. On top of providing our Ottomatika advanced automated driving algorithms, a full sensor suite of radar and LiDAR and our multi-domain controller, which acts as the brain of the car – and in which the Intel SoC sits- Delphi acts as the system integrator – putting the pieces of the puzzle together- to deliver an automotive grade, safe and seamless solution for our OEM customers.
The early work and results have been better than we expected. The reviews from our joint demonstration drives CES ranged from shock and awe to pure bliss at the thought of automated truly happening- sooner than anyone thought possible.
So, when I heard the news this morning – I was so excited for the benefits this could bring. Imagine being able to harness the start-up mentality and agility of Mobileye and support it with the resource rich, global scale of Intel. It’s awesome.
And today’s announcement is good news for Delphi. We will continue to partner with Intel and Mobileye and rigorously pursue delivering CSLP for 2019. I think this acquisition will help accelerate the pace of technologies - both the advancement of those in development, but also ideas just waiting for their chance to become game-changers.
And I will and continue to give you a front-row seat for this exciting race to automated driving.