Volkswagen will invest about $4 billion by 2025 to build digital travel services and products, including a cloud-based platform that connects vehicles to customers and provides services such as car sharing. In addition, Volkswagen will also embed the smartphone app "We Park" into the car infotainment system and connect the car to suppliers such as Amazon.

Volkswagen invests $4 billion to build digital travel business and software development

Volkswagen will invest 3.5 billion euros (about 4 billion US dollars) by 2025 to build digital travel services and products, including a cloud-based platform that connects vehicles and customers to provide services such as car sharing.

The German automaker said on Thursday that it is developing a new software operating system called "vw.OS" that will be launched in Volkswagen's electric cars by 2020. Volkswagen said in a statement that these new electric vehicles will adopt a new electronic structure to help achieve automatic driving.

Volkswagen's new electric car will use a new proprietary software operating system to connect different sensors and controllers instead of having about 70 different sensors and controllers operating independently on each car. In this way, the information collected by the parking sensor can be connected to the steering wheel, brakes and HD map. In this way, once the camera on the car finds a free parking space, the car can stop by itself.

Volkswagen says that if the operating system is designed in-house, rather than relying on third-party software from different vendors that offer a variety of sensors, it's easier to upgrade wireless software to cars.

Volkswagen invests $4 billion to build digital travel business and software development

Volkswagen expects the company's sales to reach around 1 billion euros by 2025 by offering new digital travel services, including car sharing, parking and parcel delivery services.

Volkswagen's efforts in digital travel will include embedding the smartphone app "We Park" into the car infotainment system and connecting the car to suppliers such as Amazon, which can use the popular app to open the car. The item is delivered to the delivery location.

Volkswagen also said it will launch a car-sharing business called "We Share" in Berlin in the second quarter of 2019, with an electric car number of 2,000. The “We Share” service will be extended to the core European markets, as well as parts of the US and Canada.