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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Honda has invested $750 million [techcrunch.com] in General Motors' self-driving car technology subsidiary Cruise, with plans to invest $2 billion more. The two carmakers will jointly develop a mass-produced autonomous car:

Honda will commit $2.75 billion as part of an exclusive agreement with GM and its self-driving technology subsidiary Cruise to develop and produce a new kind of autonomous vehicle. As part of the agreement, Honda will invest $2 billion into the effort over the next 12 years. Honda also is making an immediate and direct equity investment of $750 million into Cruise, which pushes the company's valuation up to $14.6 billion. Honda's investment gives the automaker a 5.7 percent stake in Cruise.

The milestone agreement follows the giant $2.25 billion investment [techcrunch.com] made by SoftBank's vision fund in May.

This new autonomous vehicle, described by GM president Dan Ammann as the "next evolution in the future of transportation," will be produced at high volume for global deployment. Cruise founder and CEO Kyle Vogt didn't elaborate what this next-generation autonomous vehicle might look like. But during a call with TechCrunch on Wednesday he used words like "innovative," "space-efficient" and "multi-purpose." He also noted Honda's expertise in space-efficient design.

Also at Ars Technica [arstechnica.com], CNBC [cnbc.com], and WSJ [wsj.com].

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