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BlackBerry joins self-driving car bandwagon with dedicated research center
BlackBerry Ltd. is the latest company to make a move into the self-driving car business, as the once-great mobile phone maker launched an autonomous driving research center on Monday.
While BlackBerry’s decision to abandon making mobile phones in favor of developing software is well-known, what isn’t as well known is that one of the company’s software divisions, QNX, is a major supplier in the automotive industry via its QNX secure operating system, which can be found in more than 60 million vehicles.
The expansion of QNX sees Blackberry, with the support of the Canadian government, invest $75 million in the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Center in Ottawa, Ontario. As opposed to other companies such as Google and Apple that are developing their own self-driving systems, the center will be primarily tasked with developing production-ready software for autonomous vehicles, both independently and alongside partners in the public and private sectors.
Along with the announcement, BlackBerry said it plans to recruit and hire local software engineers at QNX, and that one of the center’s first projects will be working with the University of Waterloo, PolySync and Renesas Electronics to build an autonomous concept vehicle. The Government of Ontario has also given approval for BlackBerry to test autonomous vehicles on roads within the Provence.
“Autonomous vehicles require software that is extremely sophisticated and highly secure,” BlackBerry Chief Executive Officer John Chen said in a statement. “Our innovation track record in mobile security and our demonstrated leadership in automotive software make us ideally suited to dominate the market for embedded intelligence in the cars of the future.”
One such future partner for BlackBerry’s autonomous vehicle software is the Ford Motor Co., with both companies signing a new supply deal at the beginning of November. A report at the time noted that BlackBerry’s QNX software is already part of the entertainment system in Ford vehicles and that the new relationship meant that “BlackBerry is now in a position to leverage its current relationship in a deeper way to embed its technology in Ford products.”
While Ford has its own self-driving vehicle ambitions, there’s nothing stopping BlackBerry from being a part of them.
Image courtesy of BlackBerry
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