VW to spend billions to transform cars, start ‘We Share’ service

FRANKFURT • Volkswagen AG will invest 3.5 billion euros ($5.3 billion) by 2025 on digital products including a cloud-based platform to connect vehicles and customers to offer services such as car-sharing.

VW also said Thursday it will launch a car-sharing business, called “We Share,” in Berlin using a fleet of 2,000 electric cars in 2019.

The We Share service will expand in core European markets as well as selected cities in the U.S. and Canada, the carmaker said.

The German automaker said it was working on a new software operating system, to be known as “vw.os,” which will be introduced in VW brand electric cars from 2020 onward. The new electronic architecture is designed to help facilitate autonomous driving, VW said.

Rather than having around 70 different sensors and controllers operating independently in a vehicle, the new cars will connect the sensors using the new software operating system.

This way, data gathered by a parking sensor could be linked to the steering, brakes, and high-definition maps to allow a car to park itself once an on-board camera spots a free parking space.

VW also said it was easier to do over-the-air software updates for cars if the operating system was designed in-house, rather than depending on third-party software supplied by the different vendors providing various sensors.