Bosch to build billion dollar autonomous vehicle chip plant

Troubled car-industry supply giant Robert Bosch has signed off on a €1 billion plant in Germany to build semiconductors that will provide the brainpower for autonomous vehicles.

The biggest single investment in the 130-year history of the world’s biggest auto-industry supplier, the Dresden plant will employ 700 workers once it’s complete in 2019, the company has said.

Bosch, known as a key supplier for internal-combustion engine technology, remains under investigation from German prosecutors for its role in the Volkswagen Group’s Dieselgate scandal, for which it supplied the engine management computers.

It has since been linked to a fourth emissions-cheating car maker, GM, for that company's diesel-powered US pickups breaching EPA rules. The other car makers it has been implicated in assisting to sneak around emissions laws are Daimler and FCA.

But the company is now prepping itself for a world of Level 4 and Level 5 autonomy, or self-driving, with both Audi and Mercedes-Benz on the cusp of Level 3 this year.

The factory will produce chips for not just automotive use, but for smart houses and wired city infrastructure, planned in parts of Europe in 2021.

"Expanding our production capacity will help us boost our competitive position," Bosch Chief Executive Officer Volkmar Denner said in a statement, insisting semiconductor use was rising as "connectivity and automation rise."

Bosch insisted that in 2016, every new car sold in the world used an average of nine of its chips to do everything from meet emissions laws to parking autonomously.