Shares of Mobileye N.V. (MBLY) are up more than 9% this morning after Bloomberg reported that the Jerusalem-based company has partnered with Intel (INTC) to develop self-driving car technology for BMW. According to anonymous sources quoted by the publication, senior executives from each company will hold an event on Friday to discuss the collaboration.
Mobileye is a collision avoidance software developer. The company’s technological advancement in the field of mono vision for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems [ADAS] has allowed it to currently supply 90% of the world’s top automakers with its real-time, vision-based collision avoidance camera systems. The company also released a mapping service this year, called Road Experience Management [REM], that provides real-time data for precise localization collected by cars to the cloud for other vehicles to use. Nissan is the latest large automaker to adopt the technology. Also the US Department of Transportation announced recently it would use Mobileye’s technology on city buses for its “Smart Cities Challenge”.
BMW has been a client of Mobileye, along with General Motors (GM), Volkswagen, and Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA).
Although major companies such as search giant Google (GOOGL) and electric carmaker Tesla Motors have been running tests on driverless cars over the last couple of years, fully autonomous cars are still a long way off being widely used on public roads.
The coming together of powerful names such as Mobileye, Intel and BMW could help accelerate that process.
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