BMW Teams With Intel & Mobileye to Make Fully Autonomous Driving a Reality by 2021

by BMW of Silver Spring

2021 will be here before you know it – and thanks to a new collaboration between the BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye, so should fully autonomous driving.

BMW is combining its automotive expertise with leaders from the technology and computer vision and machine learning industries to develop more innovative, collaborative, fully automated driving solutions. The goal? To incorporate these technologies into series production by 2021.

The experts at BMW Group, Intel, and Mobileye are confident that fully autonomous driving technologies will make our roads safer and less stressful. The BMW iNEXT model already features some of these technologies and will be the foundation for BMW’s autonomous driving strategy. BMW will also utilize the iNEXT model as the basis for autonomous vehicle fleets on highways and in urban environments.

Before that point, the partners will have to address the final three stages of future technology development as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) following traditional human-powered driving (level 0), “semi-autonomous” (level 1), and “hands-off” (level 2) technologies:

Level 3: “Eyes off,” enabling the driver to take their vision off the road
Level 4: “Mind off,” transforming in-car time into leisure or work time
Level 5: “Driver off,” the final stage of travel without a driver inside

The vision of the project is as revolutionary as the partners themselves. BMW, Intel, and Mobileye plan to develop an open platform that meets the challenges of these three stages and will be made available to multiple car vendors and other industries.

“[The] combined expertise of Intel, Mobileye and the BMW Group will deliver the next core building block to bring fully automated driving technology to the street,” said Harald Krüger, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG. “We have already showcased such groundbreaking solutions in our VISION NEXT 100 vehicle concepts. With this technological leap forward, we are offering our customers a whole new level of sheer driving pleasure whilst pioneering new concepts for premium mobility.”

At BMW of Silver Spring, we invite you to visit our dealership and discover how BMW is changing the face of car-driving today. It only gets more exciting from here.

Image Credit: BMW