Volkswagen plans to challenge Google with own Autonomous Vehicle software

HAMBURG -- Volkswagen plans to develop most of the software needed for autonomous cars in-house, the head of the German carmaker's luxury unit Audi said on Tuesday.

The automaker is not rejecting collaborations in some areas outright, said Markus Duesmann, who as well as running Audi is also on Volkswagen's management board, where he is responsible for research and development.

"But we'll make the bulk of the software on our own in the future," he said during an industry event.

Asked whether Volkswagen was looking to Alphabet's Google as a benchmark in software development, Duesmann said it wanted to be at least on the same level.

"We accept the challenge," he added.

Daimler and Volkswagen are working on their own operating systems for autonomous cars to make sure they have a chance to compete with large tech firms such as Apple and Amazon in the area of electric vehicle data.

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