Deeply rooted in China, seeking a way out of the market
In the past, the Chinese market was a manufacturing/sales market for BMW. Today, we can see that BMW attaches great importance to the needs of Chinese users, so China's R&D department should also provide more value.
Currently, BMW has three R&D centers in China, located in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenyang. This constitutes the largest R&D network outside Germany, covering new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, smart interconnection, digital services, and design.
In terms of electrification, BMW established the “High Voltage Battery R&D Center” in Shenyang, and cooperated with the Ningde era to provide batteries and BMW assembled battery packs for the PHEV models of the BMW 5 Series. With orders of 4 billion euros, 2.5 billion in China, 1.5 billion in Germany and international markets, the Ningde era will set up factories in Germany to supply batteries for BMW's next-generation technology flagship product, iNEXT.
In addition, BMW's Chinese team also researches energy management systems, motors, electronic control equipment, and other technologies, and will import into the global R&D system in the future and export to the world.
In terms of autonomous driving, BMW has already cooperated with Tencent/4Dituxin/China Unicom to explore how to maintain driving pleasure in the era of autonomous driving.
To put it simply, the cooperation between BMW and Tencent will build a "high-performance data-driven development platform" in 2019 (specifically, based on Tencent's cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence capabilities, built for automated driving simulation and testing. The private cloud platform); and the new cooperation with NavInfo, embodied in the high-precision map for autonomous driving; and China Unicom cooperation, reflected in 5G communication technology and services. In addition, BMW and a number of partners have released a cross-industry white paper on Automated Driving Safety First, which promotes cross-industry standardization of driver assistance systems and autonomous driving technologies.
As early as 2016, BMW and Intel/Mobileye reached a partnership to establish the core strength of driving autonomous driving research (including vehicle manufacturing / large suppliers / automotive chips / high-precision maps). In April last year, BMW established an autonomous driving research and development center in Munich, Germany. BMW's autopilot R&D team in Beijing and Shanghai is also a very important part of the team. The team consists of nearly 100 people. They focus on the development and verification of autonomous driving functions based on typical traffic scenarios in China and develop self-driving in line with the local market. Technology and products.
In 2017, BMW began testing large-scale L4 self-driving vehicles. It is currently investing 80 BMW 7 Series in the world for the L4 road test. It plans to conduct 5 million kilometers of the actual road test and 240 million kilometers of computer simulation test. After mass production of BMW's iNEXT intelligent network car in 2021, it will conduct an L4 autonomous fleet test in major markets including China.
Of course, while conducting forward-looking technology research and development, BMW is still bringing existing mature technology to the market. For example, L2 driver assistance is already available on new cars such as the new 3 Series, the New 7 Series, the new X5 and the X7.
In terms of intelligent network connection, BMW teamed up with Alibaba to introduce the Tmall Wizard into the car and introduce the car home remote service for BMW Cloud Connect. At the same time, more than 1.4 million connected BMW vehicles are currently on the road in China, and BMW can think about the next generation of iDrive systems through user behavior big data.