Intel, BMW Self-Driving Car: Prototype of Highly Automated Car Unveiled

Chipmaker Intel's partnership with German automaker BMW is beginning to take shape as both companies continue to work together in developing highly automated cars that are expected to populate the roads by the end of 2017.

During a press event at their new Autonomous Driving Garage in Silicon Valley last week, Intel unveiled a sleek, silver BMW 740i, which is the first of 40 BMW 7 Series vehicles that are expected to begin on-road testing later this year. All vehicles will be equipped with automated driving technologies from Mobileye, which Intel acquired for $15 billion last March.

Intel, BMW and Mobileye are all working together to develop a self-driving platform which will be licensed to different automakers down the line. This is similar to what Intel's rival NVIDIA is also currently developing.

"We are now successfully demonstrating that platform and are preparing plans to bring it to market for other OEMs and tier-one suppliers to accelerate their programs," said Doug Davis, senior vice president and general manager of the Automated Driving Group at Intel.

In line with this goal, the companies are focusing on the new and complex data gathered from the test cars. Intel expressed the importance of learning from the information they have gathered and its role in shaping their self-driving car platform. Specifically, there is a focus on the different aspects of self-driving vehicles such as sensing, in-vehicle computing, artificial intelligence and connectivity to the network as well as the cloud.

As such, Intel has set up different labs that will be used for algorithm development and training. Aside from the new lab in Silicon Valley, Intel also has other labs located in Arizona and Oregon, as well as another one located in Germany.

As for BMW, the recently unveiled prototype will serve as the basis for its upcoming electric car dubbed iNEXT. It is said to come with Level 3 automation and is expected to arrive sometime in 2021.