Volkswagen Group (VG) has just announced that they will purchase a controlling stake in Volvo Truck’s WirelessCar, a digital service developer specialising in connected driving, for 1.1 billion Swedish crowns (USD122 million),
Volkswagen Group said WirelessCar technology would further its goal of developing value-added services for customers by enabling safe and stable data exchange between operating systems in its cars and a cloud platform it is developing with Microsoft.
The deal will give (VG) a 75.1% stake in WirelessCar which will allow Volvo to focus on commercial vehicles, its core business since it sold Volvo Cars back in 1999. Volkswagen has said it aims to invest more than 11 billion euros (USD12.6 billion) in electric vehicles, digitalization, autonomous driving and mobility services by 2023, with the bulk earmarked for electric cars.
WirelessCar has its own technology platform and develops digital services like billing and safety and emergency breakdown services for customers including Jaguar Land Rover, Daimler, Nissan and Volvo Cars. The company has more than 3 million active connected cars across the globe and is expected to report revenues of about 500 million crowns in 2018, Volvo Group said in its statement.
