Daimler and BMW sign a collaboration agreement on autonomous driving

The two German manufacturers chart a joint work plan towards the mobility of the future

In military strategy they say that if you can’t beat your enemy, join him. They also say that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. Whatever the case, here there are no enemies, only car manufacturers that eye each other warily and, at times, extend a hand to one another to advance technologically and contain costs. This is what has happened with this agreement between Daimler and BMW on autonomous driving.

The two German giants have joined forces to collaborate on the study, testing and application of autonomous driving at levels 3 and 4 based on vehicle-to-vehicle communication technologies.

A pact that confirms an understanding that, back in December 2018, they had already set in motion through talks between the two groups.

The future of mobility lies in autonomous driving

This is how Daimler and BMW see it. That is why they intend for this collaboration agreement to allow technologies to be applied to their cars marketed from the middle of the next decade onwards.

Bearing in mind that another major group, their compatriot Volkswagen, is strongly committed to the same premise, electric and autonomous cars, and that with its ID prototypes it has shown its more than incipient interest in self-driving cars, the Daimler and BMW agreement aims to take a joint step to at least offer the same level of autonomous driving as Volkswagen, or surpass it.

It is worth remembering that Ford and Volkswagen also recently announced an agreement which, in addition to the manufacture of light vehicles, establishes an alliance under which they would share information on technologies applied to autonomous driving.

And further back, in 2015, Audi, part of the Volkswagen Group, together with Mercedes-Benz and BMW bought the company HERE Technologies, a specialist in digital mapping and satellite navigation systems, as well as components and devices related to externally guided driving of cars.

Cars guided by humans without driver intervention

For example, with the production model that will be based on the BMW iNEXT prototype, which should offer level 3 autonomous driving. A product that should be on sale from 2021.

A quite feasible challenge, given that BMW has been working intensively on driving without human intervention since 2017 at its dedicated centre in Munich.