General Motors Co. and Microsoft Corp. and Cruise are teaming up to speed up the commercialization of self-driving vehicles, the companies said Tuesday. General Motors Company, one of the world’s largest automakers and a major player in the self-driving car industry, is to team up with Microsoft to accelerate development of its autonomous vehicle cruise technology to commercialize self-driving cars, according to the two companies.
Cruise will use cloud computing to commercialize self-driving vehicles, Microsoft’s cloud computing capabilities such as Microsoft Azure, Azure Cloud Storage and Azure Cloud Services, and Microsoft’s Cloud Platform, while using vehicle cruise technology and Microsoft Cloud Services to commercialize the self-driving cars, the companies said. In addition to unlocking the potential for commercialization of cruise technology for self-driving vehicles in the U.S., Cruise will also leverage Microsoft’s cloud computing capabilities and its cloud service and cloud security services, as well as the company’s own cloud infrastructure to commercialize its autonomous car technology, the statement said.
Microsoft’s investment in Cruise will ensure that GM can use Azure as its preferred cloud platform and edge computing platform for automakers working to commercialize self-driving vehicles. Microsoft will help GM take advantage of cloud computing’s benefits by creating and creating new businesses and services to drive growth, and help accelerate the development and commercialization of GM Cruise’s autonomous cruise technology. Cruise is leveraging Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Cloud Storage and Azure Cloud Services to unlock the potential for commercialization of self-driving vehicle technology and its cloud services and cloud security services, as well as Microsoft’s proprietary cloud infrastructure and cloud platform. In addition to exploring opportunities in the US market for self-driving vehicles, Cruise has also leveraged the capabilities of Microsoft’s cloud computing and Azure Cloud Storage cloud service platform to market its autonomous car technology in the United States, according to the announcement.
GM has teamed up with Honda to develop a self-driving car, and Honda is working with GM to develop it under the name “Origin” for things like taxis and delivery services. GM believes the self-driving “Cruise Origin” vehicles will be safer than human drivers and will eliminate congestion by using technology to communicate with each other. The self-driving “Cruise Origin” vehicles are all electric and are considered the safest vehicles without a human driver. While the technology is not yet commercially available, GM will unveil its first of its kind, the self-driving car cruise – an autonomous vehicle built for ride-sharing – which the manufacturer plans to unveil in San Francisco sometime this year.
In the technology field, Cruise will use a combination of its own and Honda’s technology to power the self-driving shuttle. In addition to acquiring the start-up, Microsoft has developed a program to support self-driving car startups by giving them reduced-price access to test vehicles and other technologies.
In addition to Microsoft’s recent investments, Cruise and General Motors are forging a partnership to accelerate the commercialization of self-driving vehicles. Toyota and Uber are working with Amazon.com Inc, which has leapfrogged the automaker and last summer bought self-driving technology company Zoox, which is developing autonomous vehicles and a ride-sharing service. Uber and Toyota, as well as Google Inc. and Tesla Motors Inc. are working on autonomous cars of their own, while Amazon is skipping that part of the equation and buying the Self-Driving Technology Company, a company focused on developing autonomous vehicles and driving services.