BMW doubles autonomous car testing
- March 22, 2018
- Posted by: Alan Feldberg
- Category: Industry News
Despite the fatal accident involving an Uber autonomous car earlier this week, BMW has no plans to change their scheduling. In fact, they will be doubling their fleet of self-driving cars to about 80 in 2018.
‘Our estimation about autonomous driving technology remains unchanged even though this appears to be an extremely regrettable accident,’ Klaus Froehlich, BMW’s board member responsible for research and development, said to Reuters.
However, this will not deter from BMW’s importance on safety and plans to conduct tests on autonomous cars that account for 155 million miles of driving, on real and simulated roads.
Klaus also believes that if cities devoted specific lanes to self-driving cars, they would make an appearance quicker than most companies had planned. ‘In a dedicated space for only autonomous vehicles, it is easier to anticipate what other vehicles and traffic will do,’ Klaus said to Reuters. ‘This makes it easier to program vehicle reflexes and may even allow a car to have fewer sensors and less processing power than a vehicle which needs to navigate normal traffic with things like bicycle couriers.’
BMW plans to release an autonomous vehicle by 2021.
