BMW Wants to Build Self-Driving Cars that Would Be More Intelligent than Google’s

Sun, 4/15/2018 - 2:38 pm by Kirsten Rincon

BMWThe advancements that Google has made in the development of self-driving technology have motivated many other tech companies and global automakers to ramp up their efforts for building autonomous vehicles.

Even though the competition in the driverless car race is much stiffer now than it was a few years ago when Google first launched its self-driving car project, the search engine giant remains at the forefront thanks to a significant head start, with its prototypes having logged in over a million miles in road tests.

BMW Plans to Develop a More Advanced Self-Driving System

One of the world’s largest automakers, BMW, apparently has plans to create a self-driving system that would be more advanced than the one developed by Google, which is a pretty tough feat.

Representatives of the German luxury-car maker announced those plans during the Geneva Auto Show. In an interview with Reuters, BMW board member Klaus Froehlich stated that the company is hard at work on a next-level autonomous driving technology. BMW wants to become a serious contender in the race to be the first to launch a fully autonomous car and prevent tech companies like Google and Apple from establishing dominance in the future driverless car market.

“Our task is to preserve our business model without surrendering it to an Internet player,” Froehlich said. “Otherwise we will end up as the Foxconn for a company like Apple, delivering only the metal bodies for them.”

Feeling the Threat from Silicon Valley

One of the reasons why BMW has decided to commit more efforts to artificial intelligence is that the leading tech giants from Silicon Valley are at a pretty advanced stage of their programs for developing autonomous vehicles. Google and Apple are regarded as two of the biggest favorites to win the driverless car race, with a couple of factors going in their favor.

For one thing, they have a vast experience in software development, which is a crucial aspect for driverless cars. Also, both companies are extremely wealthy, so if they decide to build autonomous cars on their own, they would not have difficulties to fund such an expensive project, which would present a major financial burden for any automaker.

If one of the Silicon Valley powerhouses manages to be the first to bring a self-driving car to market, they would get a significant advantage over traditional automakers, which are already in a less favorable position than tech companies when it comes to earning consumer trust. The prevailing opinion among consumers nowadays is that they would be more comfortable riding in a self-driving car that is designed by a tech company, rather than one built by an automaker, as they believe that companies like Google and Apple are far better suited and well-versed in creating artificial intelligence systems that are supposed to be used to control autonomous vehicles.

That is why BMW, along with many other global car manufacturers are rapidly investing in research and development of self-driving technologies, trying to protect the auto industry against the competition coming from Silicon Valley.