Automated driving: CARIAD acquires automotive division of sensor data

Wolfsburg/Ingolstadt/Chemnitz | April 8, 2022 – On the road to automated driving: CARIAD acquires the automotive division of Intenta GmbH, where more than 100 experts work in the field of sensor data fusion. With this know-how, the Volkswagen Group's software company is increasing its depth of value added and, at the same time, accelerating the development of assisted and automated driving functions. CARIAD is developing these up to Level 4 for all of the Group's car brands. Completion of the acquisition is expected towards the end of 2022 and is still subject to approval by the antitrust authorities.

"Our goal is to develop key software components ourselves and increase the depth of value added in key development areas," says Lynn Longo, Chief Technical Officer at CARIAD. "That's why we are expanding our expertise along the entire tech stack for automated driving. One building block here is sensor data fusion. With the acquisition of Intenta's automotive unit as a proven specialist in this field, we are expanding our competencies."

The fusion of the various data coming into the car – whether from the lidar and radar sensors, cameras, navigation or in-cabin monitoring with occupant observation – plays an important role for automated driving functions. Merging and overlaying all this data creates an accurate and consistent image of the environment. This enables the vehicle to recognize objects in its environment, interpret their movements, and therefore move safely and automatically in its surroundings. Sensor data fusion is therefore an important prerequisite for the high safety requirements of assisted and automated driving, where drivers can take their hands off the steering wheel and use the time for other activities. In addition, Intenta's automotive developers have expertise in the development of swarm services and display functions.

CARIAD already made an acquisition in the development field of automated driving last year and took over the camera software division of Hella Aglaia. The acquisition of Intenta's automotive unit is now the next logical step. CARIAD is pursuing the goal of massively increasing its vertical value creation in software and hardware development in the coming years through the recruiting of experts, acquisitions and strategic partnerships. In this way, the company intends to retain control over and help shape the customer experience in software-controlled cars in the future. By the middle of the decade, the company intends to develop a large part of the software in strategic areas of software and hardware architecture, the operating system, the cloud, automated driving and infotainment in-house.