The BMW Group and Daimler have signed a contract to jointly develop technologies for driver assistance systems, highly automated driving on highways, and automated parking.
This cooperation was initially announced in February and now finally an agreement has been signed by both German car automakers.
In addition, further talks are planned to extend the cooperation to higher levels of automation in urban areas and city centres. This underscores the long-term and lasting nature of the undertaking, which will extend to encompass a scalable platform for automated driving.
The non-exclusive cooperation is also open to other OEMs and technology partners, with results being made available to other OEMs under license.
A key aim of the cooperation is the swift market launch of the technology, which is expected to feature in passenger car systems for private customers from 2024.
The two companies will each implement the technologies in their respective series products independently.
The cooperation will see more than 1,200 specialists working together, often in mixed teams.
Efforts will focus on developing a scalable architecture for driver assistance systems, including sensors, as well as a joint data centre for data storage, administration and processing, and the development of functions and software.
Automated driving at the BMW Group
The BMW Group has been working on highly automated driving since 2006 and has established a non-exclusive platform with technology specialists, suppliers and OEMs to take it to series maturity.
Since 2017, work in this area has been consolidated at the Autonomous Driving Campus in Unterschleissheim, just north of Munich, and the industrialisation of the technology is being advanced with the support of partners.
The generation of technologies that is currently under development will go into series production as Level 3 automation in 2021 in the BMW iNEXT where it will also be Level 4 enabled for pilot projects.
Automated driving at Daimler AG
Daimler AG has been working on series development projects not only for specific Level 3 vehicles but also for Levels 4 and 5. Long a leader in active safety systems, it programmed its systems largely in-house right from the very beginning.
2019 will see the launch in San José, Silicon Valley, of its first pilot programme, with Bosch, on self-driving vehicles (Levels 4/5) in urban environments. This will be the next milestone within the existing cooperation between both partners and the cooperation will continue as planned.
Early next decade, Daimler will bring to the market not only highly automated (Level 3) vehicles but also fully automated (Level 4/5) vehicles.
It is the only OEM in the world to be so well-positioned to apply autonomous driving in every relevant context, from passenger cars and vans to buses and trucks, and is, therefore, relying on scalable solutions to deliver automated driving.
