BMW Group partnership for future mobility: Joining hands with Tencent to build BMW Group China High Performance D³ platform.

Beijing. BMW China Automotive Trading Ltd. and
Tencent signed an agreement in Beijing on Friday, 19 July to work
together on building the BMW Group China High Performance D³ platform.
The BMW Group will use the platform to develop automated driving
technologies and products which suit the complex local traffic
conditions and meet local customer demands.

 

Alejandro Vukotich, Senior Vice President Automated Driving, was also
at the ceremony, which marked another important milestone towards
automated driving: “Our ultimate goal is to make the car safer than
the human driver through greater automation. Safety is paramount to
us. We therefore need to process a lot of data for simulation, testing
and validation. The launch of the D³ – Data-Driven Development –
platform in China is the next big step for us along this path.”

 

Moreover “China is at the forefront of automated driving development,
and we aim to play a pioneering role in this area,” said Mr. Jochen
Goller, President and CEO of BMW Group Region China. “The
collaboration between BMW Group and Tencent will set the benchmark for
cross-industry cooperation. The BMW Group China High Performance D³
platform will allow us to develop autonomous driving solutions that
represent a better fit for the specific driving scenarios in China.”

 

“Tencent is committed to assisting automotive companies in the
digital transformation,” added Mr. Dowson Tong, President of Tencent
Cloud Smart Industry. “The collaboration between Tencent and BMW
Group has deepened over the past year or so, which proves BMW’s
recognition of Tencent’s technical strength in the fields of cloud
computing, big data, security and AI. We hope that with the continuous
deepening of cooperation between the two parties, we can create a new
model and a new benchmark for cooperation between Chinese technology
companies and international automotive companies. We also look forward
to providing more assistance to the localization of international
first-class automotive companies in China.”

 

The BMW Group China High Performance D³ platform should be set up and
ready to begin operations by the end of this year. The “D³” in the new
IT platform’s name stands for Data-Driven Development, which forms the
basis for the development of highly (Level 3) and fully (Level 4)
automated driving functions.

Before the BMW Group commences series production of Level 3 vehicles
in 2021, the platform will be used mainly for safety validation of
Level 3 and the early-stage study of Level 4 technologies. After 2021,
the platform will assist both the post-production development of Level
3 models and research into Level 4 technologies.

 

Tencent will provide IT architecture, tools and platforms across the
field of automated driving research and development. Both partners
will comply strictly with Chinese laws and regulations on data
security, prevent data security risks and ensure data compliance using
Tencent’s security expertise.