BlackBerry plans to hire software engineers to work on ongoing and emerging engineering projects for connected and autonomous cars, and will test autonomous vehicles on Ontario roads as part of a pilot program. One of the AVIC division's first projects will be supporting this pilot as well as a plan to build an autonomous concept vehicle by working with partners such as the University of Waterloo, PolySync, and Renesas Electronics Corp. The announcement is BlackBerry's second recent investment in transportation technology, after the company rolled out an asset-tracking system for freight in September. Its "BlackBerry Radar" tags deliver near real-time data on the location and condition of truck trailers and containers. BlackBerry QNX has been supplying embedded software to the automotive industry for over 10 years and can be found in more than 60 million vehicles today, the company says.