With the company no longer building smartphones, BlackBerry has decided to enter the self-driving car scene, and it is doing so via the BlackBerry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Center (AVIC), a facility that is said to be “key to building the framework for self-driving cars.”
Located in Ottawa, Canada, the BlackBerry QNX AVIC will create the underlying platform on which the self-driving cars will rely on. To do so, the AVIC will be teaming up with Renesas, PolySync and the University of Waterloo to build a concept vehicle that will be tested on Ontario roads.
The Canadian government itself is pretty enthusiastic about the potential of AVIC as well. Even hough the Canadian government isn’t funding the research hub, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has touted the facility as both a job creator and crucila to making Canada a “global leader” in autonomous tech. Of course, whether or not BlackBerry is able to survive in the self-driving industry will be anyone’s guess at this point.
Source: Engadget, BlackBerry