Delphi Automotive, PLC has snatched up yet another startup, supplementing its ever-growing web of acquisitions and partnerships in a bid to create a fully autonomous vehicle.
On Tuesday, the UK-based automotive technology company testing self-driving Audi SV5s in Pittsburgh announced that for $450 million, it would acquire nuTonomy, a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup developing software for autonomous vehicles.
The acquisition, which should be finalized by the end of the year, will double the number of staff currently working on autonomous vehicles development to about 200, said Glen De Vos, chief technology officer at Delphi.
As a result of the company’s 2015 acquisition of Carnegie Mellon University spinoff Ottomatika, the company currently employs between 50-60 technical employees in Pittsburgh at RIDC Industrial Park in O’Hara and hopes to add about 100 more jobs by next summer.
Delphi also works on autonomous vehicles in Singapore, Santa Monica, Calif., and in Silicon Valley, but the main laboratories will now be Pittsburgh and Boston. When the acquisition is completed, Delphi estimates it will have 60 operational self-driving cars out on the road.
In the past, Delphi has created commercial mobility partnerships with the likes of TransDev, a public transportation company based in France.
Now, the company will have direct ties to the ride-hailing industry, vis-a-vis NuTonomy — in June, the startup entered a partnership with Lyft.
In a release, Lyft said NuTonomy’s technology would power the first self-driving vehicles on Lyft’s network.
“The first stage of the partnership will be focused on research and development around the understanding and optimization of the passenger experience,” according to the release. “Future stages of our collaboration could lead to thousands of nuTonomy cars on the Lyft platform, as we work together to build a shared vision for cities.”
While a nuTonomy-Lyft pilot is planned for the Boston area, that could still play out in interesting fashion in Pittsburgh, where Delphi builds and tests autonomous systems in the same region as Uber, which has an Advanced Technology Center in the Strip District.
Delphi CEO Kevin Clark said in a release Tuesday that the partnership with nuTonomy, tied to the current Ottomatika team, creates the industry’s most “formidable” solution in the self-driving car ecosystem.
“This transaction is another example of our ongoing dedication to developing, implementing and commercializing the highest performing and safest [autonomous] system available.”
Courtney Linder: clinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1707. Twitter: @LinderPG.
First Published: October 24, 2017, 5:27 p.m.
