BMW Officially Opens Autonomous Driving Campus

With autonomous driving accidents being in the media spotlight recently, it is good to know that an automaker is doing whatever it take...



With autonomous driving accidents being in the media spotlight recently, it is good to know that an automaker is doing whatever it takes to perfect autonomous driving.

The BMW Group’s spanking new autonomous driving campus is a state-of-the-art centre of excellence that covers every base when it comes to offering greater capacity for innovation and increased development efficiency. Its development expertise in the fields of vehicle connectivity and highly / fully automated driving placed at a single location accelerates its goal of transformation into a tech company. (Yes.. really.)


The 23,000 square metres of office space with room for 1,800 employees is an open-plan layout, intelligent and flexible use of office space, and a multifaceted and creative workplace.

And BMW is not resting on its laurels as it is already recruiting more IT specialists, software developers, artificial intelligence researchers, machine-learning boffins and data analysts to fill up the rest of the campus.



The pace of innovation is accelerating rapidly and young professionals cite future viability, a modern working environment and flexible, agile workflows as key to an employer’s attractiveness. 

“We need the best software developers in the world, especially people who are experts in Artificial Intelligence,” BMW’s board member for development, Klaus Fröhlich, said. “We need further generations of chip development. We need this startup culture and we need to invest in this as a startup culture. We have startup funding of €500 million.


“We need to identify the weak spots and develop a safe process and a car that will always work with all customers in all conditions, not only in Arizona where there are no pedestrians.”


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.

The campus is still under construction, but the main building and workshop are already complete. A small track is also upcoming, but it will mostly be used for calibrating test vehicles.

Fröhlich said, "We know it's a marathon. It's a huge challenge." In other words, it's going to be a while before we're all in autonomous cars. But right now, automakers need to go all in on our driverless future.

Images - www.engadget.com


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