Stellantis has signed a commercial agreement with self-driving startup Wayve to introduce hands-free driving technology into its vehicles beginning in 2028, expanding the British company’s push into the global automotive market.
The companies announced the partnership Thursday during Stellantis’ investor day event at its North American headquarters in Michigan.
The deal marks the second major automaker partnership for Wayve and follows the company’s recent $1.2 billion Series D funding round backed by investors including Stellantis, Nissan, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Uber.
Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Wayve also did not specify which Stellantis vehicle brands or models will receive the technology.
However, Wayve chief executive Alex Kendall described the agreement as a large-scale commercial contract focused initially on the North American market.
Stellantis owns 14 automotive brands globally, including Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, and Dodge.
Wayve Promotes Flexible AI Driving System
Kendall said Stellantis’ broad product lineup and international scale made it a strong fit for Wayve’s AI-based driving technology.
“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.
He said Wayve’s software is designed to adapt across different vehicle types, sensors, computing hardware, driving styles, and geographic regions.
Wayve’s approach differs from some competing autonomous driving systems because it does not depend on fixed hardware configurations or detailed high-definition maps.
Instead, the company uses an end-to-end neural network system trained using driving data collected from vehicle sensors.
The software is designed to operate on hardware already installed in automaker vehicles, reducing the need for specialized equipment.
That flexibility has attracted interest from cost-conscious automakers including Nissan and now Stellantis.
System Will Initially Support Hands-Free Driving
According to Kendall, Stellantis will initially deploy Wayve’s hands-free, eyes-on assisted driving system rather than a fully driverless platform.
The product is designed to function similarly to Tesla Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
Wayve is also separately developing a fully autonomous system intended for future robotaxi and passenger vehicle applications.
Kendall said engineers built a prototype system for Stellantis in approximately two months and had the vehicle operating with the AI driving system within weeks.
“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.
“It’s capable of generalizing across different compute stacks, different sensors, different vehicles, shapes, and sizes,” he added.
Stellantis Expands North American Vehicle Plans
The partnership comes as Stellantis pushes a broader North American turnaround strategy.
During Thursday’s investor event, the automaker announced plans to launch 11 new vehicles in North America by 2030 as part of a $70 billion recovery plan.
According to the company, seven of the planned vehicles will be priced below $40,000, while two will be priced below $30,000.
It remains unclear whether Wayve’s self-driving technology will appear in those lower-cost models.
Wayve has emphasized the efficiency of its software architecture as a way to reduce deployment costs compared with more hardware-intensive autonomous driving systems.
The agreement reflects continued competition among automakers and AI startups seeking to commercialize assisted driving and autonomous vehicle systems as companies attempt to balance scalability, cost, and safety requirements.
Featured image credits: Wikimedia Commons
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