Bosch has announced that the company has signed an agreement at the beginning of April to acquire self-driving car startup Five to strengthen its software development for automated driving systems, according to Bosch’s press release on 12 April 2022. The company has not disclosed the financial details of the acquisition.

The company press release said that both companies share a common vision of automated driving and of safe automated driving systems. The software building blocks in Bosch and Five’s toolchain engineering environments complement each other.

“Automated driving is set to make road traffic safer. We want Five to give an extra boost to our work in software development for safe automated driving, and offer our customers European-made technology”, said Dr. Markus Heyn, member, Bosch board of management, and chairman, Mobility Solutions.

“Five is the perfect fit for our engineering activities, not least due to its associates’ mindset and agile approach. This brings us closer to our aim of getting safe automated driving onto our roads,” said Dr. Mathias Pillin, president, Bosch Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division.

Significance: UK-based Five will be part of Bosch's Cross-Domain Computing Solutions division. The company said that by adding Five to Bosch's self-driving car development team, the company will strengthen its agile project structure. Furthermore, Bosch said that the acquisition is a step further toward consolidating its market position in software and automated driving. On 24 February, Bosch has also acquired Germany-based high-resolution digital maps specialist Atlatec.

“Scale matters in building automated driving technology. Bosch is a global leader in driving assistance technologies, with core technologies and vast data lakes that will be essential in bringing safe self-driving systems to market. We are excited for Five to become part of Europe’s most powerful SAE Level 4 player and to be a part of Bosch’s future success,” said Stan Boland, CEO, Five.