
“Autonomous technology has the potential to help make the jobs of our employees and partners safer and more productive, whether it’s in a fulfillment center or on the road, and we’re excited about the possibilities.” Amazon revealed a prototype of these delivery vehicles in January 2020.Īmazon’s investment in Rivian came on the heels of its deal in February 2019 with Aurora Innovation, an autonomous tech startup run by former Google and Tesla executives that pioneered autonomous driving teams at both giants.Īn Amazon company spokesperson told Wired about the investment: The US technology giant plans to buy these vehicles from Rivian, an electric automaker in which Amazon has invested $440M. In September 2019, Amazon said that it planned to put 100,000 electric delivery vehicles on the road by 2030, with deliveries starting as soon as 2021. More recently, an increasing percentage of that investment has been directed toward autonomous vehicle technology. It’s built its own fleet of cargo jets, explored delivery by drone in the form of “Prime Air,” and more.


Over the last decade, Amazon has spent billions of dollars working on finding ever-better solutions to the last-mile problem in delivery.
Softbank expects mass production driverless years software#
This "split-lock" design - combining locked features that can't be changed and unlocked features that can - can share portions of the same chip, promising higher performance and less energy use, which is key for electric-battery powered autonomous vehicles.ĪRM's arch-rival Intel Corp has been working on a roadmap to deliver its first generation of chips for fully autonomous cars starting in 2020, based around its acquisition of collision-detection software maker Mobileye a year ago.

The company says its new Silicon on Chip (SoC) designs will require as a little as a few dozen watts of energy rather than the kilowatts now needed in chips to power driverless car prototypes.Ĭustomers can also use the same designs to run other, less safety-critical features like infotainment that can be improved via over-the-air software updates.
