British self-driving startup Wave has joined forces with Stellantis and Nissan. The newcomer competes with Tesla and Alphabet, Google's parent company.
Stellantis will apply Wave's "artificial intelligence (AI) driver" across all its brands starting in 2028, according to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. The brands include Chrysler, Dodge and Ram. Stellantis has signed a similar deal with Nissan, with the Japanese launch expected to come sooner.
The technology supports hands-free driving on highways and in cities. However, drivers must stay attentive and be ready to take the wheel immediately. It is the approach Tesla introduced as "Full Self-Driving (Supervised), or FSD."
The difference lies in strategy. Tesla installs the system only in its own vehicles. Wave, by contrast, sells its system. "Not everyone wants to buy a Tesla," co-founder Alex Kendall said. "Providing the technology to every other automaker is our opportunity."
Founded in 2017 by Cambridge University robotics PhDs, Wave chose an approach in which "AI learns to drive directly." Early Tesla and Waymo coded driving rules one by one. They classified objects and applied human-made rules. But progress was slow because the systems struggled to handle near-infinite unexpected situations. In late 2023, Tesla also shifted to an AI approach that trains models on vast amounts of driving footage, similar to ChatGPT.
Investment poured in. In 2024, Wave raised $1.05 billion (about 1.62 trillion won) in a round led by SoftBank, with Microsoft, Nvidia and Uber also participating. This year, it raised an additional $1.5 billion (about 2.3 trillion won) at an $8.6 billion (about 13.3 trillion won) valuation. Stellantis, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan, along with semiconductor companies AMD, Arm and Qualcomm, took part.
However, Wave's "end-to-end" approach is a point of contention. It is a structure in which a single AI model learns everything from sensor input to vehicle behavior, raising concerns that problems could arise if the safety driver is removed. Waymo in the United States and Baidu's Apollo Go in China are already operating driverless services using a hybrid approach that combines AI with high-definition maps and traditional rules. Wave, by contrast, does not require precise maps. Last year, it demonstrated this through a tour of 506 cities worldwide with a safety driver aboard.
The sensor debate is similar. Wave maintains that it can operate using only cameras and radar, without expensive lidar. However, Stellantis and Nissan are developing robotaxis that include lidar.
