Roush Hiring Engineers For Autonomous Vehicles Venture

TROY, MI — Roush Industries' Troy technical center will be adding about 150 engineers in the near future. The move is part of the company’s plans to jump into the software and data analytics for autonomous vehicles arena. Roush recently opened the 44,000-square foot technical center.

"We are seeing quite a bit of growth in our business related to autonomous vehicles," Gary Rogers, vice president of advanced engineering for Roush, told the Detroit News. "Different levels of driver assistance, up to the point of self-driving vehicles. And so we are supporting activities for the integration of those systems plus the testing of such vehicles."

Roush is a longtime leader in engineering, testing, prototype and manufacturing for the automotive industry, the newspaper reported. The Livonia-based company opened the technical center to be closer to customers such as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Auburn Hills, as well as to the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Research and Development Center in Warren.

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Rogers declined to say which customers are using Roush's expertise to develop autonomous-car systems because that information is highly sensitive with the technology emerging and changing quickly.

In 2015, Roush built about 150 self-driving cars for Google's Self-Driving Car project, which has been renamed Waymo, the News reported. Rogers declined to specify which customers his company will be working for on autonomous vehicles.

"We are supporting several customers who have their own self-driving programs," Rogers told the newspaper. "And we — through our test services group — we are testing such vehicles and gathering a lot of information on those vehicles as we test them."

Roush isn’t the only Troy business getting in the autonomous vehicles market. Delphi Automotive PLC recently announced plans to split itself into two ventures. The move aims to accelerate Delphi’s growth in products related to autonomous vehicles, data, infotainment and connectivity. Delphi is one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers.

Photo by Onetwothreefourfive via Flickr Commons