As robotaxi services steadily pop up in cities around the world, self-driving tech in commercial passenger cars has been slow to catch up.
Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep, Ram, Dodge, Fiat, and several other car brands, is the latest automaker to announce plans to bring more advanced automated driving tech to its vehicles.
The company announced Thursday a new strategic technology partnership with U.K.-based startup Wayve. The partnership aims to integrate Wayve’s AI Driver system into Stellantis’ STLA AutoDrive platform.
That could eventually equip some Stellantis vehicles with hands-free, supervised driving tech that works on both city streets and highways, similar to systems already available on Tesla and Rivian vehicles. Stellantis and Wayve are describing this first iteration as a Level 2++ system, meaning drivers would still need to pay attention to the road and supervise the vehicle as it drives.
The first vehicle integration is planned for North America in 2028. Stellantis says the platform can support more advanced automated driving features down the road as regulations and customer expectations evolve.
“This agreement marks an important next step for Wayve and Stellantis in scaling our technology together,” said Alex Kendall, co-founder and CEO of Wayve, in a press release. “Our teams have already demonstrated how quickly the Wayve AI Driver can be integrated across Stellantis’ vehicle platforms, bringing up a prototype in less than 2 months.”
While there is no word yet on which specific brands or models would get the tech first, Wayve developed a prototype with Stellantis in just a few weeks on the company’s Jeep Cherokee platform.
Founded in 2017, the London startup makes autonomous-driving software that learns from real-world traffic using cameras and machine learning. This theoretically eliminates the need for detailed maps that its competitors rely on. Instead of building its own driverless cars, Wayve is focused on the software, which it says is vehicle-agnostic, meaning it can be adapted to work on everything from passenger cars to delivery vans.
The buzzy startup announced earlier this year that it had closed a $1.2 billion Series D investment round with a range of investors, including SoftBank, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber. And just last month, Advanced Micro Devices, Arm, and Qualcomm Ventures announced a separate $60 million investment in the company.
Uber’s investment will specifically support Wayve-powered robotaxis on the Uber platform. The companies intend to launch their first service in London in 2026, with plans to expand across multiple markets.
Nissan has also signed on to use Wayve’s technology. In December, the automaker announced that it would integrate Wayve’s tech into a broad range of its cars starting in 2027.
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