BMW Deploying Self-Driving seven Series Fleet to Roads This Year
Race To Build Self-Driving Cars Accelerates
BMW AG will dispatch a fleet of autonomous vehicles to U.S. and European cities in this year’s 2nd half, the next step in its partnership with Mobileye NV and Intel Corp. to introduce fully self-driving vehicles by 2021.
The German automaker will put forty of its seven Series sedans on the road and train them to drive in urban areas, Klaus Froehlich, BMW’s head of development, said in an interview. The purpose is to apply the gathered data toward producing the iNext, which will supplant the seven Series as the BMW brand’s flagship model and be capable of utter autonomy four years from now.
Automakers and technology companies are rushing to form partnerships to challenge against the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which has clocked two million self-driving miles on public roads, and Tesla Motors Inc., with 1.Trio billion miles of data from Autopilot-equipped vehicles. BMW is appealing to other carmakers to adopt its treatment to help shoulder research costs, speed development by sharing data and ensure they don’t become also-rans.
“Those who reach the finish line before you will have their tech become the basis of standardization,” Amnon Shashua, Mobileye’s co-founder and chief technology officer, said in an interview. “This is why sharing is significant.”
BMW will be following Uber Technologies Inc. and Volvo Cars in putting autonomous cars on the road, with the latter two companies partnering on test vehicles in Pittsburgh and Arizona. Other carmakers have been reluctant so far to heed BMW’s call for adopting its platform. Rival Daimler AG has said it chooses to develop its own technology.
Mobileye shares rose as much as Four.Four percent to the highest intraday in three months and traded at $42.12 as of 1:12 p.m. in Fresh York.
Costly Technology
Enabling vehicles to navigate without human input through cities requires them to see and understand sophisticated situations more like people do. Jerusalem-based Mobileye brings expertise in cameras that model the surroundings while Santa Clara, California-based Intel wields computing capabilities to power artificial intelligence. The companies released details Wednesday in conjunction with CES 2017, the consumer-technology demonstrate in Las Vegas.
“If everybody would use the same network, it will be best,” Froehlich said. “At the beginning, I think only premium cars will be able to afford such technology.”
Carmakers could participate by buying sensors to install in their cars, or go deeper with equipment that helps crowd-source data from an autonomous-vehicle fleet, said Kathy Winter, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Automated Driving Division.
While Munich-based BMW’s main target is individual car owners, the technology will be available for ride-sharing fleets as well, Froehlich said. Auto manufacturers are pushing into so-called mobility services like car-sharing and ride-hailing to counter alternatives to private vehicle ownership.
Partnerships Form
BMW, which co-owns the DriveNow car-sharing venture with Sixt SE, will be jockeying for consumers’ attention against the likes of Uber, Ford Motor Co. and Volkswagen AG, among others. Google, which separated its self-driving car project into a fresh unit called Waymo last month, plans to begin a ride-sharing service using semi-autonomous minivans made by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV as soon as the end of 2017. VW is rolling out Moia, a fresh division that will concentrate on ride-sharing.
Revenue from car-sharing is projected to surge more than sevenfold to Four.7 billion euros ($Four.9 billion) by 2021, according to a explore by Boston Consulting Group Inc. Robo-taxis will make up forty percent of automotive profits by 2030, more than selling vehicles to individuals, according to consulting company Roland Berger.
— With assistance by Keith Naughton, and Elisabeth Behrmann