Daimler AG and the BMW Group have agreed to join forces on automated driving.
In a statement, the companies said that, initially, their focus will be on advancing the development of next-generation technologies for driver assistance systems, automated driving on highways, and parking features (up to Society of Automotive Engineers, or SAE, Level 4).
The two companies have signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop this technology. Daimler AG and the BMW Group said that they view their partnership as a long term, strategic cooperation and aim to make next level technologies widely available by the middle of the coming decade.
Ola Källenius, member of the board of management of Daimler AG responsible for group research and Mercedes-Benz cars development, said, “Autonomous driving is one of the most revolutionary trends for us at the moment, and the entire Daimler Group is working very hard on it. As always at Daimler, our top priority is safety. Instead of individual, standalone solutions, we want to develop a reliable overall system that offers noticeable added value for customers. Working with the right partners, we want to make significant advances in enhancing the performance of this technology and bring it safely on the road.”
“As we continue to pursue our strategy, we are combining the expertise of two technology leaders. At the BMW Group, long term partnerships within a flexible, scalable, non-exclusive platform are fundamental to advancing the industrialization of autonomous driving. Combining the key expertise of our two companies will boost our innovative strength and speed up the spread of this technology,” said Klaus Fröhlich, member of the board of management of BMW AG for development.
According to the companies, joint development work will be carried out via a scalable architecture covering several stages of automation, with Levels 3 and 4 enabling automated driving on highways. In addition, the two partners plan to discuss the possibility of extending their collaboration to cover higher levels of automation, both on highways and in urban areas. These considerations underline the sustainable, long-term nature of the cooperation, which includes the aim to create a scalable platform for automated driving.
The companies pointed out that development of current-generation technologies and ongoing collaborations of the two companies will remain unaffected and continue as before. Ongoing development of latest-generation technologies and existing collaborations will remain unaffected by the projected cooperation and will go ahead as planned. Daimler AG and the BMW Group said that they also will explore additional partnerships with other technology companies and automotive manufacturers that could contribute to the success of the platform.
Daimler AG explained that it has been working on development projects not only for specific Level 3 vehicles but also for Levels 4 and 5. It said that it programed its systems largely in-house right from the very beginning, and that 2019 will see the launch in San José, California, of its first pilot program, 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 said, it will bring to the market not only highly automated (Level 3) vehicles but also fully automated (Level 4/5) vehicles.
The BMW Group said that it 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 industrialization and scalability of the technology is being advanced with the support of partners. Brand new agile software development is used at the campus to speed up development of the platform and set new industry standards. Around the world, more than 70 test vehicles are trialing state-of-the-art technology. They collect data in order to improve machine learning with artificial intelligence through simulations and test new Level 2 – 5 functions out on the road. 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, according to the company.