This means that the maker of the Fiat 500 will join with the company that copied it to create self-driving technology under the control of Intel chips.

The development partners intend to use each other's individual strengths, capabilities and resources to enhance the platform's technology, increase development efficiency and reduce time to market.

They will co-locate German engineers. Fiat Chrysler will bring engineering and other technical resources and expertise to the cooperation, as well as its significant sales volumes, geographic reach and longtime experience in North America.

Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne said the move will advance autonomous driving technology, and it is vital to form partnerships among automakers, technology providers and suppliers.

"Joining this cooperation will enable FCA to directly benefit from the synergies and economies of scale that are possible when companies come together with a common vision and objective."

In July 2016, BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye announced that they were joining forces to make self-driving vehicles a reality by collaborating to bring solutions for highly automated driving (Level 3) and fully automated driving (Level 4/5) into production by 2021.

Since then, they claim they have been designing and developing a scalable architecture that can be used by multiple automakers around the world, while at the same time maintaining each automaker's brands.

The cooperation remains on-track to deploy 40 autonomous test vehicles on the road by 2017 year-end. It also expects to benefit from leveraging data and learnings from the recently announced 100 Level 4 test vehicle fleet of Mobileye, an Intel Company, demonstrating the scale effect of this collaborative approach.

BMW chairman Harald Krüger said: "The two factors that remain key to the success of the cooperation are uncompromising excellence in development, and the scalability of our autonomous driving platform. With Fiat Chrysler as our new partner, we reinforce our path to successfully create the most relevant state-of-the-art, cross-OEM Level 3-5 solution on a global scale."

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said: "The future of transportation relies on auto and tech industry leaders working together to develop a scalable architecture that automakers around the globe can adopt and customize," said ,. "We're thrilled to welcome FCA's contribution, bringing us a step closer to delivering the world's safest autonomous vehicles."