BMW Brilliance builds world’s first 5G-based car manufacturing base

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- BMW Brilliance Automotive Ltd (BBA), a joint venture between the BMW Group and Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd., announced on July 22 it has achieved full 5G coverage at its Shenyang plants with a transmission speed of up to 1Gbps, the world’s first-of-its-kind 5G-based car production base.

(Photo source: BMW Brilliance)

BBA currently has three factories in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning Province, including Tiexi plant, Dadong plant and a powertrain factory. The joint venture said it began developing a 5G network for the three Shenyang-based plants as early as October 2018. It has completed construction of 21 mobile phone masts and 35 5G bases stations in April this year, making the plants fully covered by 5G signal with an area extending over 3 million square meters.

The 5G network, which is offered by two state-owned telecommunications operators—China Mobile and China Mobile, will help speed up data processing, elevate manufacturing efficiency, improve product quality relying on its ultra-high bandwidth, low latency and high reliability.

BBA also initiated on April 26 a pilot project that uses 5G technology to transfer a large amount of test data from vehicles to a data center in real time, becoming the world's first car manufacturer who applied 5G in automobile R&D and production.

Going forward, the joint venture will explore 5G-based applications in more scenarios for car production such as AR (augmented reality), sub-meter level positioning, cloud-control automated guided vehicle, human-wearable interaction as well as communication among robots.