Photo: Daimler
In February this year, German auto rivals Daimler and BMW announced the collaboration between them would expand beyond the deal the two struck in 2018 for the unification of their car sharing efforts. More precisely, they announced they will join hands to develop autonomous cars.
A few months after that announcement was made, Daimler and BMW said on Thursday (July 4) they signed the papers that makes their partnership official.
The signing of the agreement comes just days after the two, together with a bunch of other companies including Audi, Intel or Volkswagen, published what it called the world’s first framework for safe automated driving systems.
As per the agreement between Daimler and BMW, the carmakers will pool resources to create a series of AV driving systems up to Level 4 that are to be released on public roads in 2024. Trials of these systems will begin in 2021 with Level 3 tech on cars supplied by BMW, and then Daimler will take over for Level 4.
More to the point, the BMW iNext will be the first car to use the jointly developed technologies when it launches two years from now.
Separate research in this field has been conducted by both companies until now. BMW has 70 vehicles testing Level 3 AV systems, while Daimler has already begun work on higher tier technologies. Now, some 1,200 people working for both carmakers will work together, at times in in mixed teams, for the same goal.
The joint operations will be based at the Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre (MTC) in Sindelfingen, the Daimler Testing and Technology Centre in Immendingen and the BMW Group Autonomous Driving Campus in Unterschleissheim.
The teams will work to create “a scalable architecture for driver assistance systems, including sensors, as well as a joint data center for data storage, administration and processing, and the development of functions and software.”
The signing of the agreement comes just days after the two, together with a bunch of other companies including Audi, Intel or Volkswagen, published what it called the world’s first framework for safe automated driving systems.
As per the agreement between Daimler and BMW, the carmakers will pool resources to create a series of AV driving systems up to Level 4 that are to be released on public roads in 2024. Trials of these systems will begin in 2021 with Level 3 tech on cars supplied by BMW, and then Daimler will take over for Level 4.
More to the point, the BMW iNext will be the first car to use the jointly developed technologies when it launches two years from now.
Separate research in this field has been conducted by both companies until now. BMW has 70 vehicles testing Level 3 AV systems, while Daimler has already begun work on higher tier technologies. Now, some 1,200 people working for both carmakers will work together, at times in in mixed teams, for the same goal.
The joint operations will be based at the Mercedes-Benz Technology Centre (MTC) in Sindelfingen, the Daimler Testing and Technology Centre in Immendingen and the BMW Group Autonomous Driving Campus in Unterschleissheim.
The teams will work to create “a scalable architecture for driver assistance systems, including sensors, as well as a joint data center for data storage, administration and processing, and the development of functions and software.”
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