More Chinese automakers collaborating on EVs -- The automotive industry has entered into an intense era of collaboration among carmakers, technology giants, and even software start-ups, among others. This trend comes as countries, including China, accelerate into increased usage of EVs and AVs. Numerous partnerships have sprouted up in the past year, adding density and life to this ecosystem. Among Chinese automakers themselves, a handful of significant partnerships were made to accelerate the developments of EVs and AVs within the country. In fact, China is shaping up to be the first real test of Big Tech's ambitions in the world of car making.

BEIJING, Dec 27 (Reuters) - China's BYD (002594.SZ) and autonomous driving startup Momenta have established a 100 million yuan ($15.7 million) joint venture to deploy autonomous driving capabilities across certain BYD car model lines, according to a Momenta statement and a person familiar with the matter. The new venture, called DiPi Intelligent Mobility Co and located in Shenzhen, combines BYD's capabilities as an automaker with Momenta's experience in intelligent driving, said the statement on Monday. BYD has invested 60 million yuan in the venture while Beijing-based Momenta is investing 40 million yuan, the person said. The person said the initial scope of work will include deploying "Level 2 plus" autonomous driving capability across some vehicle model lines. Level 2 semi-autonomous cars have technology that can take care of nearly all aspects of driving, from steering to acceleration and braking, but the driver needs to be ready to intervene if needed.

Swedish automaker Volvo Cars held a Tech Day on Wednesday where company executives shared a roadmap of the company's future plans, including a switch to all-electric and software-based vehicles by 2030. A big part of Volvo's future plans include having ten of thousands of software-powered connected cars on the road in the next decade traveling millions of kilometers and continuously sharing data with the automaker. All of these software-based vehicles will be like rolling smartphones that can be updated OTA. The crowd-sourced data collected from Volvo vehicles will include continuous inputs from vehicle sensors that monitor the environment, including high-resolution lidar data used for autonomous driving. Allowing customers to share vehicle data will help Volvo continuously make software improvements to its cars, including the advanced safety systems, including autonomous driving systems.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the car manufacturer will have the "basic functionality" to deliver level 5 autonomous driving this year. Bloomberg and Reuters report that Musk said Tesla was "very close" to bringing out fully autonomous driving capabilities. He made the claim in a prerecorded video shown at the World AI Conference in Shanghai. "I'm extremely confident that level 5 or essentially complete autonomy will happen and I think will happen very quickly," said Musk. "I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level 5 autonomy complete this year." SEE: An IT pro's guide to robotic process automation (free PDF) (TechRepublic) In April last year, Musk said Tesla would probably have fully autonomous driving by the end of the year and that he would be "shocked" if it didn't by the end of 2020 at the latest, at which point "having a human intervene will decrease safety". From the beginning of this month, Tesla sells its Autopilot Full Self-Driving (FSD) for $8,000, up from $7,000.

Some automakers are partnering with one another, while others are embracing the hands-free future on their own. Another route sees major automakers team with tech companies so they don't have to pour millions into developing all of the necessary components on their own. But that's still costly, and having to rely on someone else for parts isn't ideal. General Motors has thought about all of the available avenues and introduced a new patent to simplify things. What Are the Necessary Parts?

In the race to develop self-driving technology, Chinese Internet giant Baidu unveiled its 50 partners in an open source development program, revised its timeline for introducing autonomous driving capabilities on open city roads, described the Project Apollo consortium and its goals, and declared Apollo to be the'Android of the autonomous driving industry'. At a developer's conference last week in Beijing, Baidu described its plans and timetable for its self-driving car technology. It will start test-driving in restricted environments immediately, before gradually introducing fully autonomous driving capabilities on highways and open city roads by 2020. Baidu's goal is to get those vehicles on the roads in China, the world's biggest auto market, with the hope that the same technology, embedded in exported Chinese vehicles, can then conquer the United States. To do so, Baidu has compiled a list of cooperative partners, a consortium of 50 public and private entities, and named it Apollo, after NASA's massive Apollo moon-landing program. The program is making its autonomous car software open source in the same way that Google released its Android operating system for smartphones.

Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) received a major boost to its development of self-driving cars when the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Department of Investigation closed its review of a fatal accident of a Tesla Model S while it was on autopilot. The investigation concluded that there was no problem with Autosteer, the key part of Tesla's Autopilot, and confirmed Tesla's claims that when used properly the system reduced crash rates by almost 40%. The investigation found that Tesla vehicle crash rates dropped from 1.3 accidents per million miles driven to 0.8 after the introduction of Autosteer. This is important news for the company and gives its efforts towards building a self-driving Tesla car sharing program a major boost. Last year, the company announced the second master plan for the company.

Every year at CES, there is a slew of announcements from automakers about their latest connected car or their next futuristic concept. However, one thing missing was the chipmakers that make these things possible. Last year gave us a glimpse of what these companies were doing, but this year, and all announced major automotive design wins, partnerships and products. Each company has a different approach to automotive wtih a different focus on the self-driving, connected car of the future and how they plan to enable it. At CES 2017, Intel's Automated Driving Group launched its first automotive-branded Intel GO solutions.