New campus for autonomous technologies opened by BMW

2 May 2018

BMW Group has opened its new campus for autonomous driving, allowing it to pool together development expertise in the field in one single location.

The company is one of many developing autonomous technology for use in future mobility solutions. It decided to establish a new campus giving its research and development teams working on driverless systems and vehicle connectivity one base from which to pool their resources.

The campus, which offers 23,000 square metres of office space with room for 1,800 employees, was completed in record time. The site’s optimum infrastructure, its proximity to the Research and Innovation Centre, and the nearby link to the motorway network helped to swing the decision in its favour.

The BMW Group is intending to drive forward the development of highly automated vehicles with the new campus in Unterschleißheim and is looking to recruit IT specialists and software developers in the areas of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analysis.

The autonomous driving campus is opening its doors to ′new working environments’, according to the company, including an open-plan layout, intelligent and flexible use of office space, and a multifaceted and creative workplace. The benefits for the development experts employed here are flexibility, efficiency, a high level of autonomy and short distances. This means, for example, that a software developer working at the new campus can immediately test out freshly written code in a vehicle that is just a short walk away.

In a statement, the BMW Group says it is ′the first company in the automotive industry to apply the agile working model systematically and universally for an entire specialist area – in this case across autonomous driving and driver assistance, from the research phase all the way through to series production development. Agile working models form a crucial basis for efficient, future-proof development.’

BMW is keen to develop autonomous systems for use in both public and with its car-share scheme DriveNow, which recently merged with Daimler’s car2go. ′This is a time of disruptive change in the automotive industry, with the arrival of new players making the competitive environment ever more challenging,’ the statement continues. ′The pace of innovation is accelerating rapidly, and young professionals cite future viability, a modern working environment and flexible, agile workflows as key to an employer’s attractiveness. A cutting-edge development facility such as the new campus for autonomous driving, therefore, represents a crucial asset for the company’s long-term sustainability and innovative capability.’