Automotive parts supplier Delphi is doubling down on autonomous driving (AD). On Tuesday, the $17 billion company announced it had reached an agreement to acquire nuTonomy, a Boston startup , for $400 million and earn-outs totaling about $450 million.
Four year-old nuTonomy is the developer of an automated driving stack — “the combined software programs that do everything from fusing sensor inputs that perceive the environment around a vehicle to facilitating the decision-making of where to actually drive,” according to Ars Technica.
NuTonomy will add more than 100 employees, including 70 engineers and scientists, to Delphi’s 100-member AD team. Previously, Delphi acquired Ottomatika, a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff that provides software and systems development for self-driving vehicles. In May, Delphi announced it was spinning off its $4.5 billion powertrain business, which employs 20,000 people, into a separate company. The new company will be called Delphi Technologies, while the remainder of the business will be dubbed Aptiv. The split’s projected completion is March.
Delphi’s President and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Clark said the nuTonomy transaction “is another example of our ongoing dedication to developing, implementing, and commercializing the highest-performing and safest AD system available.”
By combining efforts with nuTonomy in Boston, Singapore, and other pilot cities around the world, Delphi says it will have 60 autonomous cars on the road across three continents by year-end.
It plans to begin selling a turnkey self-driving system called CSLP to automakers by 2019. Delphi expects to be in production with CLSP in 2021.
Featured image: Thinkstock
