Renault Nissan join Googles autonomous cars delivery system: Renault-Nissan and Google will work together to define how to deliver with autonomous cars!

Renault and Nissan announced Thursday the signing of an exclusive agreement with Waymo, owned by Alphabet, Google's parent company, to work on driverless mobility services. These include imagining together how to deliver goods or being an autonomous taxi service. Waymo has already launched one in Phoenix six months ago. By the summer of 2018, Waymo had revealed that its self-driving cars could take Walmart customers to shop. In a statement, the two manufacturers add that they become the first to explore this land with Waymo in France and Japan. During an initial period, the agreement will cover all aspects of passenger services and autonomous vehicle deliveries.

The three partners will work together on market research and the legal and regulatory issues surrounding the driverless car. These analyzes will begin with France and Japan and could be extended later to other markets, except China, which is not covered by the scope of the agreement. "This partnership will accelerate our commitment to creating new shared mobility services and benefit the entire automotive ecosystem, placing us at the forefront of new autonomous mobility business offerings in our key strategic markets," he said. Thierry Bolloré, CEO of Renault, quoted in a statement.

Renault Nissan join Googles autonomous cars delivery system

The scale of investments to devote to the development of electric and autonomous vehicles is pushing many builders to seek alliances. Fiat Chrysler and Jaguar have also made deals with Waymo. Until 2014, car manufacturers had the ambition to impose their own operating system in the cars of the future to control all data. Many of them, however, realized that it would be difficult to offer the same level of customer experience as Android or iOS.

This is not the first time the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance has signed an agreement with Google. Last year, the two manufacturers announced to collaborate with Google to equip with its operating system Android. This agreement plans to install from 2021 the operating system of Google, Android, in the vehicles of the alliance. The goal is to give drivers direct access to certain services, such as the Google Maps navigation system, Google Assistant voice control and apps, such as driving aids, on the Google Play Store.

Regarding the cockpit of the future, Renault has also produced a prototype of an on-board car audio system with the Devialet startup, in which the manufacturer has invested, without the functionality of a smart speaker but by working on the acoustic of 'a vehicle.

Renault multiplies agreements with tech companies. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced on Tuesday, June 11, 2019 that its intelligent personal assistant will equip Audi, Renault and Honda vehicles in China. The Tmall Genie Auto connected speaker, developed by Alibaba AI Labs, will allow drivers to use voice commands to track a delivery, buy movie tickets or book a restaurant. The situation, however, raises the question of who, manufacturers vehicles or giants of tech, will control in the future the cockpit of the car and especially the data that will come out.

Especially ahead of the full-scale tests, Waymo has been testing on autonomous cars in the United States for a total distance of more than 10 million miles (16 million km). The Boston Consulting Group estimates that it will take 1.800 billion (1.576 billion euros) worth of investment to develop driverless cars by 2035.