Volkswagen Group is present process the world’s largest industrial overhaul for the electric-vehicle age, plotting half a dozen battery crops simply in Europe and retooling meeting strains across the globe. And but, its CEO sees autonomous-driving expertise bringing about an excellent greater shift.

“This transformation will remodel the business greater than EVs or the electrification does,” VW Group CEO Herbert Diess mentioned in an interview for Bloomberg’s Qatar Financial Discussion board. “The automobile turns into so totally different when it’s driving autonomously.”

Diess’s view might shock some auto business observers, given the breadth of VW’s electrical revamp and the extent of disillusionment that has set in for autonomous-vehicle expertise.

Whereas Google’s Waymo began providing driverless rides in robotaxis late final yr, the service is restricted to the Phoenix suburbs. Different firms together with Tesla and Ford Motor have made predictions in regards to the expertise’s readiness that haven’t panned out. Uber Applied sciences and Lyft  each reached offers just lately to promote their self-driving items.

Whereas improvement is taking longer than many anticipated, automakers and expertise corporations are persevering with to plow billions into attempting to automate driving. The consulting agency AlixPartners expects the price of extremely and absolutely autonomous programs to drop no less than 60 p.c by 2030 and allow broader use instances.

With in all probability 10-times extra strains of code than what’s on a smartphone, vehicles are already software program merchandise and will likely be “essentially the most refined web system you may think about” when they’re rendered driverless, Diess mentioned.

VW is working towards providing autonomous driving in key markets worldwide. Joint efforts with Ford and affiliate Argo AI  within the U.S. are making good progress, Diess mentioned. In China, VW’s largest market, the automaker has partnered with native tech firms to be among the many first to supply autonomous driving, largely in personal vehicles.

Regulation in Europe has improved just lately, Diess mentioned. VW introduced final month that it plans to supply a extremely automated model of the hippie-era microbus it’s reviving as an electrical van and can begin check drives in Hamburg this yr.

VW is spending about 2.5 billion euros ($3 billion) a yr on boosting its software program capabilities. Though Diess acknowledged there may be “nonetheless so much lacking” to show Europe’s largest automaker right into a software program powerhouse, he argued the commercial large shouldn’t be counted out.

“We’re in fairly a superb place to stay a really sturdy participant on this future automotive world, in ‘new auto,’ as we name it,” Diess mentioned.