The world of autonomous cars is coming. Maybe it’s a utopian future where all the vehicles drive themselves, while traffic jams and road rage are a thing of the past. Or maybe it’s just a bunch of fancy robo-taxis (and hopefully buses) that ensure city commuting is less of a pain. No matter how it plays out, it’s coming and BMW wants to be prepared, by establishing its own autonomous driving campus.
In Unterschleißheim (near Munich, Germany) the automaker opened the facility it says will help with the “systematic development of highly and fully automated driving at the BMW Group.”
At the event, Klaus Fröhlich of BMW AG’s board of management said, “It is important because autonomous driving will change the automotive industry.” The goal is to build pilot projects at the facility and that BMW is building a cornerstone of artificial development here. The campus in Germany joins the automaker’s research office in Mountain View, California, working on BMW’s place in the autonomous driving world. Both facilities will have cars on the road and in simulators — BMW has three test cars in the United States already.
Those vehicles gather data while driving and help the company work on edge-case scenarios, all of which are set to expand hugely. By the end of 2018, BMW expects to have 40 additional test vehicles in the US and 80 worldwide, driving around countries including China, Israel and Germany.
