Yesterday, three tech giants, BMW Group, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Arriver Software AB announced that they are joining hands to develop Automated Driving (AD) technologies. They have already signed a long-term strategic cooperation agreement. When saying AD technologies, they mean not only New Car Assessment Program (NCAP). Plus, they include Level 2 Advanced Driving Assistance Systems to Level 3 High Automated Driving functionalities.
Not surprisingly, the upcoming AD technologies will be based on the current BMW Automated Driving software stack. It debuted with the BMW iX in 2021. Due to this cooperation, BMW’s improved technology will appear in the next-generation models.
To develop the next-level AD technologies, the companies will involve more than 1,400 specialists. They will work together in locations worldwide. The locations’ geography varies from Germany, the US, Sweden, China, to Romania. Also, they will work at the BMW AD Test Center in the Czech Republic.
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In this regard, Nicolai Martin, Senior Vice President Driving Experience, BMW Group shared his thoughts. He said that “this joint software development is an important milestone for the BMW Group.” He fairly said that BMW needs state-of-the-art software in all components of the digital value chain. Otherwise, they will not be able to enable sophisticated and safe functionalities in a vehicle. “This forms the backbone for intelligent driver assistance systems.”
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In his turn, Nakul Duggal, Senior Vice President, and General Manager Automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. said: ”Building on already commercialized stack components from BMW Group and Arriver, this cooperation will position us to extend BMW Automated Drive software to the Snapdragon Ride platform, and expand the accessibility of safer self-driving technologies to other automakers and Tier-1s in an open, flexible and scalable deployment framework.”
As for the third company executive, Giuseppe Rosso, President and Managing Director, Arriver, commented: “Joining forces with Qualcomm Technologies and BMW Group Arriver’s team will co-develop the next generation of open and scalable Drive Policy with world-class feature solutions and performance.”
However, this is not anything new. In November last year, these three issued a statement saying that BMW’s next-generation Automated Driving System will be ported on the Snapdragon Ride Vision system-on-chip (SoC). It should include Arriver Computer Vision and the Snapdragon Ride Platform’s compute SoC controllers. To provide smooth operation, the Snapdragon Car-to-Cloud Services platform controls everything.