BMW to develop self-driving cars with Intel, Mobileye

Zee Media Bureau

Frankfurt: Eyeing a new technology that enables it to put self-driving cars on the road by around 2021, automobile major BMW will team up with Intel and Mobileye.

Seeking to harness their expertise in areas including machine learning and mapping as they race against Silicon Valley companies such as Google, Tesla and Apple to develop driverless vehicles. 

"Highly autonomous cars and everything they connect to will require powerful and reliable electronic brains to make them smart enough to navigate traffic and avoid accidents,” Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich said on Friday at a joint news conference announcing the alliance.

The three companies said their new platform would be made available to multiple carmakers and they expected vehicles with highly and fully-automated driving would be brought into mass production by 2021.

Sophisticated cruise control systems already enable "hands off" driving as cameras and computers allow cars to automatically brake, steer and accelerate in traffic at low speeds. But drivers are required to stay in control. 

Now BMW, Intel and Mobileye will develop cars with even higher levels of automation described as "eyes off," "mind off," and "driver off". This requires much more computing power and software know-how, forcing traditional carmakers to collaborate more closely with technology specialists.

(With inputs from Reuters)