Market trends and business perspectives
by Anna
The BMW Startup Garage – part of the company’s Research, New Technologies and Innovations unit – has been tracking down the most innovative startups in the business for four years now, allowing the BMW Group to tap into their potential quickly and directly.
So far, more than 50 up-and-coming technology companies have completed its startup programme.
The BMW Startup Garage talks with over 1,500 startups from all over the world every year.
by Anna
Microsoft and the BMW Group have announced what they describe as “a new community initiative” to enable faster, more cost-effective innovation in the manufacturing sector.
In manufacturing today, production and profitability can be hindered by complex, proprietary systems that create data silos and slow productivity.
The Open Manufacturing Platform (OMP) is designed to break down these barriers through the creation of an open technology framework and cross-industry community.
[Read more…] about BMW and Microsoft launch ‘Open Manufacturing Platform’
by Sam Francis
BMW says its launch of the High Performance D3 platform represents ‘a key milestone’ on the automaker’s roadmap to highly and fully automated driving
It was back in 2000 when the BMW Group first started to conduct research into its vision of a car that people could drive themselves – but didn’t have to.
Six years later, in 2006, a BMW was following the racing line around the Hockenheim circuit without human assistance for the first time.
Since 2011, highly automated test vehicles from the BMW have been driving on the A9 motorway between Munich and Nuremberg. And as part of the CES in 2014, the BMW gave a demonstration of highly automated driving at the limits of performance on the Las Vegas Speedway. [Read more…] about Massive data centre: BMW launches ‘high-performance’ platform for development of autonomous driving systems
by Anna
ZF Friedrichshafen AG has received a double-digit billion-euro order from BMW AG for its enhanced 8-speed automatic transmission.
The latest version of ZF’s 8-speed transmission has been improved by integrating an electric drive. This also includes a hybrid variant.
The new transmission generation will start series production in 2022 at ZF’s plant in Saarbrücken, the lead production facility for ZF’s automatic passenger car transmissions.
[Read more…] about ZF wins major order for new automatic transmissionby Sam Francis
DXC Technology has reached an agreement to support BMW’s autonomous vehicle development through the automaker’s “High Performance D3” platform.
DXC provides services that help to provide and simplify data analysis and train the necessary algorithms to reduce the time and cost of developing autonomous vehicles.
The BMW Group High Performance D3 platform supports the company’s own autonomous vehicle development program and gathers enormous amounts of road driving data from the global BMW research and development fleet. [Read more…] about BMW and DXC partner to accelerate development of autonomous driving
BMW’s Dingolfing plant director announces the expansion of e-drive production, as well as preparations for series production of the fully electric and “highly automated” BMW iNext
The mobility of tomorrow is being turned into reality to a large extent in BMW’s Dingolfing production plant, in Lower Bavaria, southern Germany.
Ilka Horstmeier, the new director of the plant, is convinced of this. “We want to, and will, emerge as a winner in our industry’s technological transformation,” she says. “And we will continue to pioneer future topics such as e-mobility and autonomous driving.”
In this context, the plant director announced that “we will increase the number of Dingolfing-based jobs in the production of e-drive components several times over in the next few years – to a total of up to 2,000”. [Read more…] about BMW creates 2,000 jobs as it starts production of new autonomous electric car
by Anna
The BMW Group and Daimler AG are pooling their mobility services to create a new global player providing sustainable urban mobility for customers.
The two companies are investing more than €1 billion in total to develop and more closely intermesh their offerings for car-sharing, ride-hailing, parking, charging and multimodal transport.
The two companies’ mobility services have a combined total of over 60 million active customers to date.
[Read more…] about BMW and Daimler invest more than €1 billion in joint mobility services
by Anna
The BMW Group sold 142,617 electrified (battery-electric and plug-in hybrid) BMW and Mini vehicles in 2018, up +38.4%.
Europe is the Group’s biggest sales region for battery and plug-in hybrid vehicles, accounting for over 50% of sales in 2018.
With 75,000 electrified vehicles delivered to customers in Europe last year, the BMW Group is the market leader in the region, with over 16% market share.
[Read more…] about BMW Group sales of electric hybrid vehicles up 38 percent in 2018
by Anna
Six questions to Elmar Frickenstein, Senior Vice President Automated Driving and Driver Assistance, BMW AG.
In September 2017, you and your team moved to the Autonomous Driving Campus in Unterschleissheim.
What prompted the BMW Group’s decision to create this new site?
We are currently experiencing the largest paradigm shift in the history of the automotive industry. The industry is set to witness more change in the next decade than in the past 30 years. Today, we are already on the brink of highly automated driving.
[Read more…] about The BMW Group Autonomous Driving Campus: The first 450 days
by Anna
At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, the BMW Group is showcasing the future of driving pleasure with visitors having their first chance to take a virtual drive in the BMW Vision iNEXT, accompanied by the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant.
The vision vehicle is being displayed alongside a sophisticated mixed-reality installation that, for the first time, provides a virtual and immersive impression of what it is like to drive autonomously, emission-free, and fully connected in the BMW Vision iNEXT.
To begin the simulation, the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant suggests an agenda for the day and plans the activities for the trip.
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