BMW plans to open a new autonomous vehicle development center just south of Munich next year.
BMW has formally entered the race to build a self-driving car by announcing it plans to build a development center just outside of Munich in southern Germany.
BMW has said the iNEXT – a self-driving, electric and fully connected vehicle – is scheduled for release in 2021 with an entire range of automated models from BMW Group brands expected to follow.
As part of the effort to reach its goal, the BMW Group plans to combine its development expertise in vehicle connectivity and automated driving at a new campus in Unterschleissheim, Germany, which near Munich.
When it is finished, more than 2,000 BMW employees will work on fully automated driving, from software development to road testing, at the new location. The BMW Group aims to start testing highly automated vehicles in an urban environment – Munich – as early as 2017.
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With the campus in Unterschleissheim, the BMW Group will continue the expansion of its development of self-driving vehicles and is looking for IT specialists and software developers in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analysis.
“The road to fully automated driving is an opportunity for Germany’s automobile manufacturing base. The decision to develop and road-test these vehicles in the Munich area illustrates how the BMW Group and the whole region can benefit from this shift in the automotive industry,” said Klaus Fröhlich, member of the Board of Management, responsible for Development at the BMW Group.
From mid-2017, expertise from several different locations will be re-located to Unterschleissheim.
“In order to succeed, we are establishing new forms of collaboration under ‘project i 2.0,’ with small teams of specialists for rapid response and collaboration across the company, as well as a high level of individual decision-making authority,” Fröhlich said.
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The new work structures will be characterized by agile teams, short distances – and, above all, short decision-making processes. Software developers will be able to take the code they have just written across the way for testing in an actual vehicle, he said.
“We are combining the advantages of a start-up, such as flexibility and speed, with those of an established company, like process security and industrialization expertise,” Fröhlich added. “The future development site for autonomous driving will enable us to launch the BMW iNEXT, the first self-driving BMW, onto the market in 2021.”
The BMW Group currently employs around 600 people in development of highly automated driving. The majority are software developers – and their number is increasing.
“We still do our own programming here and are responsible for implementing our own ideas,” said André Müller, a software developer in the autonomous driving team.
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“We use the latest technologies, such as ROS (Robot Operating System), and are able to see the results quickly and directly in the vehicle. It is extremely exciting to be working on such an important area for the future,” he said.