Autonomous driving cars is seen by many as the future of transportation, yet, it might not deliver what most people are expecting. Most car makers today are investing heavily into this type of tech, considered by some as the Holy Grail of personal transportation. But the truth of the matter is that completely independent/autonomous driving cars might not exist after all. BMW is at the forefront of the efforts and they have dedicated millions of dollars towards this goal.
In the video below we get to see how things are evolving and shaping up. Mariana Van Zeller traveled across the world to the BMW Autonomous Driving Lab in Munich, Germany to reveal the inner workings of driverless car development, the latest frontier in auto engineering. She is part of a new series from BMW aimed at offering insight into what happens behind closed doors at the company’s research centers.
Van Zeller talks with Ralph Rasshofer about how he constantly reinvents and rethinks the technology that moves us – all while finding a balance between function and design. This is apparently a bigger challenge than most people would expect. That’s because autonomous cars need a lot of sensors and integrating them into the cars’ bodies is a tricky task.
And this is exactly where Domagoj Dukec, the head of design at BMW, steps in.
According to him, the big challenge for designers when it comes to self-driving cars is finding a way to entertain you while being driven around or maybe a way to allow you to make good use of the time you have at your disposal while en-route.
Maybe you’d like to study, to work or maybe to just relax. That’s a broad spectrum of possibilities and the design of the car has to allow you to do whatever you consider appropriate. Catering to such a wide range of choices is definitely not an easy task.
Not really a fan of these marketing videos from BMW… definitely not there to be informative, merely driving the narrative.
watch videos from their factories, more entertaining
I do… those, I truly enjoy.
BMW has to live up to the image that they’re innovating new technology – or more appropriately, staving off obsolescence.
In reality, they’re in the same circumstance as every other automotive manufacturer (with the exception of Tesla) – which is that they can implement only what systems their tier one suppliers offer.
Ever wonder why all of the in-cabin lounges while being driven concepts all get featured by OEMs around the same time? It’s because suppliers like Faurecia were working on these back in 2016.
So why do reviews I read constantly cite that BMW program their software of say fer instance ZF 8 speed auto. superior to other manufacturers? Don’t BMW own part of ZF? So they have no input into parts manufacture & engineering? So why do Toyota ( a much larger manufacturer) buy drivetrains from them? What does “obsolescence” have to do with a century old global German engineering firm that has only been expanding for decades? Biased much? Your comment applies to Takata & fuel pumps>BMW.
These are important as other manufacturers market 3 Series wannabes & ignore (as BMW’s current ad campaign promotes) that the co. is actually about innovation & not the market benchmark they have manufactured for decades. & that the Koreans now get COTY awards for doing V6 knock-offs of.