BMW has its sights sets on launching autonomous driving vehicles in China and the timetable has been set for 2021. Speaking at a summit on artificial intelligence and robotics in Shenzhen, BMW senior manager for highly automated driving Maximilian Doemling made the proclamation about the German automaker’s ambitious plan to have fully autonomous vehicles hit the streets in five years.
It’s no secret that BMW is already hard at work developing the technology that it plans to utilize as part of the company’s “Project i Next.” The 2021 timetable has also been talked about before, most recently by BMW board member Klaus Froehlich, who spoke with Automotive News back in June 2016 about the automaker’s plan to roll out a flagship autonomous model by 2021.
Doemling took it a step further when he expounded on the potential functions of BMW’s autonomous technology, describing a self-driving car in its most literal sense: a car that drives, changes lanes, and does everything by itself, enabling the driver to do other things like play with a smartphone.
It’s an ambitious statement to make, even for a company of BMW’s size and stature. That’s especially true today when Tesla, the first company to roll out autonomous driving technology in its cars, has resisted from describing the system as “self-driving” in the wake of multiple crashes and accidents that have been attributed to the electric car maker’s Autopilot system.
Only time will tell if BMW’s version of autonomous driving will live up to Doemling’s description. What appears certain though is that the German automaker is confident that it will have its autonomous driving cars out on the streets by 2021 with China being one of the first markets, if not the first itself, to get them.
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