Honda is talking to Google about teaming up with Google’s autonomous car unit, Waymo.

Google put its autonomous car operation in a separate unit earlier this year after deciding not to pursue the development of its own autonomous car but continue with the development of driverless car technologies.

In that respect it is hoping to repeat the success of the Android OS – developing the software but not the hardware.

It is believed that Honda wants insights into Waymo’s test data and its AI R&D. AI is important to autonomous cars because of the vast amounts of data they need to process.

Estimates say that 10 billion kilometres of test data are required before autonomous cars can be considered safe.