Groupe Renault has announced the acquisition of a 35% stake in a new joint venture with Okatal, Autonomous Vehicle Simulation (AVS).

Oktal is a subsidiary of Sogeclair, a French aerospace and simulation company based in Toulouse, France.

Renault and the Renault-Nissan Alliance hopes this will help it to further autonomous vehicle development by testing in a virtual environment.

“This partnership will help us to speed up building our offer of new services and improve our customer experience”, said Gaspar Gascon, executive vice president, Product Engineering of Groupe Renault.

Building on more than 15 years of collaborative development at Renault, the formation of AVS will enhance product development using driving simulators.

Fleet testing and simulation go hand in hand with developing autonomous vehicles. In order to achieve the targeted level of reliability, test vehicles must accumulate a vast number of miles, which would normally take many years of driving.