Stellantis Taps Wayve for Hands-Free Driving in 2028

Stellantis, the automaker behind the Jeep and Ram brands, has tapped self-driving startup Wayve to bring hands-free driving to its vehicles in 2028.

The companies announced the deal Thursday during Stellantis’ investor day at its North American headquarters in Michigan.

This is the second automaker deal for the buzzy U.K.-based startup and comes on the heels of a $1.2 billion Series D funding round that attracted deep-pocketed strategic investors, including Nissan and Stellantis, and returning backers Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber.

Wayve didn’t disclose the contractual value of the partnership or provide details on which Stellantis vehicles will get the self-driving software “brains” developed by Wayve, but according to Wayve CEO Alex Kendall, this is a commercial contract to supply Stellantis with tech at scale. The companies are targeting the North American market first, which helps narrow the field of Stellantis’ 14 brands, which also include Chrysler and Dodge.

“One of the amazing things about Stellantis is the global, massive scale they operate at, and the diversity of products they offer,” Kendall told TechCrunch, describing the opportunity for his startup. “It’s one of the reasons why it’s such a good match because our AI is so adaptable; we can generalize to the variety of products that they offer, and means that because of the diversity of sizes, shapes of vehicles, different driving styles, different geographies they run in our AI is built to scale across them all.”

By 2028, there could be more vehicles to choose from. Stellantis announced Thursday that it plans to expand its market coverage in North America by launching 11 new vehicles by 2030 as part of its $70 billion turnaround plan.

Seven of those vehicles will be priced under $40,000, and two under $30,000, Stellantis said.

It’s not clear if Wayve’s tech will show up in those lower-cost cars and SUVs. Although, if one took Wayve’s efficiency pitch to heart, it might seem plausible.

Wayve has developed a self-driving system that isn’t tied to particular sensors, chips, or high-definition maps, which cost-sensitive automakers like Nissan — and now Stellantis — have found appealing. Instead, Wayve’s software uses an end-to-end neural network that only uses data — captured from whatever sensors are on the vehicle — to direct and teach the vehicle how to drive. Wayve’s software can also run on whatever chip its OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partners already have in their vehicles.

Wayve’s technology supports two products that the company is marketing to automakers and tech companies — a hands-off assisted-driving system that’s comparable to Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and eventually a driverless system designed for robotaxis or even passenger vehicles.

Stellantis will use the hands-off, eyes-on system, a prototype of which was developed for the automaker in just two months, Kendall said. He noted that within a couple of weeks engineers had the vehicle — using the AI-based system — up and driving.

“I think that what we’ve been able to show is that we’ve been able to build a version of FSD that’s built on an AI model that is truly set up to generalize,” Kendall said when asked about how Wayve compares to Tesla’s system. “It’s capable of generalizing across different compute stacks, different sensors, different vehicles, shapes, and sizes.”