Joint Venture Volkswagen and Rivian: Federal Cartel Office grants approval

E/E Architecture Joint Venture Volkswagen and Rivian: Federal Cartel Office grants approval

2024-08-02 From Stefanie Eckardt | Translated by AI 1 min Reading Time

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The Federal Cartel Office has given Volkswagen and Rivian the green light. This means that nothing stands in the way of the 50:50 joint venture. In addition, Volkswagen is acquiring a minority stake in the US electric car manufacturer.

The Federal Cartel Office has approved the planned joint venture between Volkswagen and Rivian.(Image: Free licensed at Pixabay) — The Federal Cartel Office has approved the planned joint venture between Volkswagen and Rivian.
(Image: Free licensed at Pixabay)

In the new joint venture, both car manufacturers want to work together on the E/E architecture for electric vehicles. This is currently undergoing a change, as the previously predominant architectures with many distributed control units will no longer be sufficient for the challenges of the future. Due to the foreseeable shift to e-mobility, E/E architecture will contain significantly more electrical and electronic elements in the future. The same applies to the functions for automated and later autonomous driving and network-based value-added services integrated into vehicles. In this context, it is expected that software will play an even more central role in the future.

No fear of competition restraint

The Federal Cartel Office has competition law clearance for the future joint venture because it does not expect it to significantly impede effective competition. This applies regardless of whether one looks at the E/E architecture as a whole or at different subsystems and partial services as the relevant market. In the future, there will still be a sufficient offer of services for vehicle manufacturers with which they can develop E/E architectures. A significant impairment of competition for E/E architectures is not to be feared. Finally, no problematic restriction of competition is to be expected on the downstream markets for the vehicles in which the E/E architectures are used.

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