Maserati is set to use self-driving technology developed by BMW in its future vehicles.



Speaking to an industry group on Monday, Fiat chairman John Elkann failed to specify a date for when self-driving systems will be added to Maserati vehicles. However, he did say that Maserati will be the first brand from Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to use BMW’s technology, Bloomberg reports.

Maserati joined a self-driving technology consortium led by BMW back in 2017 and is also working extensively with Waymo to further the development of autonomous systems. In fact, much of Waymo’s autonomous fleet is made up of Chrysler Pacifica minivans and the self-driving division of Google even has an order for 62,000 additional Pacifica models.

Also Read: Fiat Chrysler Doesn’t Rule Out Mergers, Will Definitely Keep Maserati

This is the first bit of good news to come out regarding Maserati in quite some time after it endured a 32 per cent fall in first-quarter sales this year following a 28 per cent drop in 2018.

On January 1, 2019, the Italian car manufacturer suspended 2445 employees at its Mirafiori plant in Turin, Italy and a further 800 or so staff by March 4. These layoffs are set to last until December 31, 2019. Throughout this year, employees will attend training courses for electric and hybrid powertrain technologies as the facility gets ready to start building electric vehicles in 2020 with the next-generation Fiat 500e.

Beyond establishing an autonomous driving consortium with Mobileye, BMW is also working with cross-town rival Daimler on automated driving technologies and is currently working on both Level 3 and Level 4 systems.