Future Porsches To Drive Themselves In Traffic Jams With Mobileye Tech

Porsche is looking to upgrade its autonomous driving and driver assistance technology, thanks to a new partnership with Mobileye.

Founded in Israel, Mobileye previously worked with Tesla on the first generation of the electric car company’s Autopilot driver assistance system. The companies parted ways in 2016 and a year later the vehicle vision startup was purchased by Intel.

Mobileye was later spun off as its own company which went public in 2022. It currently works with dozens of car manufacturers, including Volkswagen, BMW, Honda, Nissan and Geely, the Chinese automotive group that owns Volvo, Polestar, Lotus and the London Electric Vehicle Company, producers of the capital city’s electric cabs.

Porsche says future cars will offer automated assistance and “navigate-on-pilot” functions based on Mobileye’s SuperVision technology platform. The German company added: “The systems will be integrated and tuned by Porsche engineers. The system that monitors the driver’s attention will also be customized by the company’s in-house specialists.”

Porsche says this approach will also be taken when it comes to integrating Mobileye’s technology with the interface of the carmaker’s infotainment system.

Adding autonomous driver assistance can be a thorny issue among drivers of the type of sports cars Porsche sells. But Mobileye says the companies will take a balanced approach here. Michael Steiner, head of development at the Volkswagen Group, which oversees Porsche, said: “In most situations, drivers will continue to want to drive a Porsche themselves in the future – and will be able to do so at any time.” That said, there are certain aspects of partially automated driving that we are interested in.”

Steiner gave an example for when drivers may want to hand over control to the car’s autonomous systems. “Mobileye SuperVision technology can aid the driver in everyday situations, for example by not having to keep their hands on the wheel the entire time in traffic jams.”

Mobileye’s SuperVision technology includes front-mounted long-range cameras, side cameras, rear cameras, surround parking cameras, long-range radar, corner radars and a main front-facing camera.

Although not describing technology on future Porsche directly, the company says: “With Mobileye SuperVision, cars can follow the navigation routes chosen by the driver, autonomously change lanes and automatically overtake slower vehicles on multi-lane roads. The system monitors the environment with eleven cameras and supporting radar fusion perception.”