Intel has been the de facto leader in the world of computer chip manufacturing and marketing for many years now. Intel’s other ventures, however, have not seen much success: the mobile business launched late, the wearables business is crippling, and they had to sell their streaming video service, OneCue, to Verizon. After a string of failures, Intel is now making serious efforts at the seemingly lucrative and rewarding business of autonomous vehicles.
Intel has given its autonomous vehicles venture a major push by buying Mobileye in March 2017. By making this transaction, Intel also acquired the company’s existing relationships with 25 automobile partners. Among these significant automobile partners is the tier-one automobile company: Delphi. And this partnership between these two giants has already started showing results.
It isn’t just about the partnerships; Intel has also launched an artificial intelligence (AI) division of its own. This division will be mainly responsible for launching 5G vehicle–to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. In addition, this AI division will also be working on solving the “big data” problem of processing all the cross-platform sensor data.
Intel can translate more of their capabilities into this new venture. Considering the amount of data the autonomous cars will have to process, Intel is well placed to do just that. If Intel gets a handle on their AI technology, it will not be too long before it starts making chips for the autonomous vehicles.
Kathy Winter, vice president of Intel’s automated driving group, said: “It’s taking things we already know but making them automotive-grade.”
Intel might have made a costly business mistake by entering the mobile market very late in the day, but it seems to have woken up early to the idea and huge business potential of autonomous vehicles. If Intel can sustain their push for developing solutions that work for autonomous vehicles and finally pull it off, it is all set to capture a lion’s share of self-driving vehicles business and dominate it the same way it has done for computers.
