Ampere opens new software center near Nice

Ampere, Renault’s subsidiary for intelligent electric vehicles, has opened a software research and development center in Sophia Antipolis near Nice, France. The goal is to drive the development of Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs).

With almost 200 software engineers, Ampere intends to tackle R&D topics such as AI, connectivity, Over The Air (OTA) functionalities, driving aids, cybersecurity and safety, architecture, validation, and software integration.

Moreover, the French say that the ‘key tech partners’ such as Google and Qualcomm, which were already mentioned earlier, are on board and that they are collaborating with research institutes, start-ups, and universities.

Sophia Antipolis

Ampere says the building was designed for the company’s in-vehicle software development. The software center is located on a site of over 4,600 square meters in the heart of the European technology park Sophia Antipolis in Southern France.

The company specifies that it has 800 square meters of software research laboratories and 2,200 square meters of office space, with a total capacity of 340 people. The site also has 214 tertiary offices, 70 laboratory test benches, and an automotive test laboratory.

Software as the center of strategy

Renault founded Ampere a year ago and bundled its electric car business into it. The IPO was initially planned for the first half of 2024, but this has been canceled for now. Ampere has placed software at the center of its strategy, as this is expected to account for around 40% of a vehicle’s cost by 2030.

To develop connected and intelligent electric vehicles, Ampere has over 1,800 software engineers who have been integrated since the acquisition of the Intel teams in 2017. Ampere aims to offer the first software-defined vehicle in Europe as early as 2026.

In October, Ampere presented a concept car called Emblème, which represents the vision of a family vehicle with a combined battery and fuel cell drive, a so-called EREV (for extended range electric vehicle) or PFCEV (for plug-in fuel cell electric vehicle).