BMW Teams with Intel and Mobileye on Automated Vehicle Technologies

BMW AG today announced a new partnership with Intel Corp. and Mobileye NV to develop technologies and open standards for highly automated and fully autonomous vehicles.

The partnership supports BMW’s previously announced plans to launch a new electric vehicle with autonomous driving capabilities for its “i” sub-brand in 2021. Dubbed iNext, the all-new vehicle will combine a variety of automated driver-assist features with a more efficient electric powertrain and digital connectivity.

The partners plan to demonstrate a highly automated driving system later this year and extend the platform to fleets with extended autonomous test drives in 2017. The common platform will address level 3 (hands-off) to level 5 (driverless) automated driving and will be available to “multiple car vendors” and other industries who could benefit from autonomous machines and deep machine learning, according to the companies.

Israel-based Mobileye, which is a leading supplier of camera-based sensor systems used in driver assistance systems, will provide its latest system-on-chip, the EyeQ5, and its Road Experience Management technology for real-time location and data modeling.

The partners will work together on new fusion algorithms that will be deployed on Intel computing platforms. Intel says its Atom and Xeon processors can provide as much as 100 teraflops of power to handle the complex workloads required to enable autonomous driving.

It isn’t clear how the new deal will affect Mobileye’s relationship with French-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics, which produces Mobileye’s sensor systems. In May, the two companies extended a 12-year-old partnership to develop a fifth-generation Mobileye system.

Intel is the world's biggest chipmaker. But it lags rivals such as NXP Semiconductors, Infineon Technologies and STMicroelectronics in the auto industry.