Volkswagen sets up autonomous driving subsidiary, plans Silicon Valley site next year

Volkswagen Group announced the creation of a subsidiary called Volkswagen Autonomy (VWAT) on Monday, with the German car giant saying it planned to "make autonomous driving market-ready." With offices in Munich and Wolfsburg, Volkswagen said that VWAT would aim to "bring a self-driving system… to market maturity." As well as its sites in Germany, Volkswagen said it also planned to establish companies in Silicon Valley and China in 2020 and 2021 respectively. Alexander Hitzinger, the Volkswagen Group's senior vice president for autonomous driving, will manage the new company. "We want to establish Volkswagen Autonomy as a global technology company where we bundle expertise from the automotive and technology industries, combining the agility and creativity of a high-performance culture with process orientation and scalability," Hitzinger said in a statement.