BMW commissions 2,000 people to conduct research into autonomous driving

BMW is setting up a center where more than 2,000 people will conduct research into autonomous driving. The manufacturer has already announced that it wants to bring fully autonomous driving cars to the market in 2021. BMW is collaborating with Intel for this.

The various BMW experts will start working at the location, which is located in Unterschleissheim near Munich, from the middle of next year. They are still working at various locations, but the car brand wants to bring all researchers together. The group currently employs about six hundred people who focus on autonomous driving, mainly software developers. BMW is going to attract more people and states that more than two thousand people will work in the research center.

The BMW Group says it needs to establish new partnerships to realize its plans. The company wants to work with small teams of specialists, who have a high level of decision-making power. By uniting the researchers in one location, the distances between the teams are reduced. For example, software developers must immediately be able to test their new inventions on prototypes. From 2017, BMW plans to start testing autonomous cars in the Munich urban environment.

BMW plans to release its electric and fully autonomous driving iNEXT in 2021. After that, a whole fleet of ‘highly autonomous’ models of all brands within the BMW Group must come onto the market. BMW announced in July that it was working with Intel and Mobileye on an open platform for autonomous cars. According to the initiators, the platform will also be made available to other car manufacturers and industries that could benefit from autonomous machines.