Tencent, BMW to co-build computing center for developing autonomous cars

Shanghai (Gasgoo)- German auto group BMW and Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings are ready to set up a computing center in China that helps the automaker develop autonomous cars in the world largest auto market, according to an agreement signed by two parties at the BMW Group China Innovation Day 2019 on July 19.

The computing center, which is scheduled to start operations by the end of 2019, will endow cars with data analysis power to help them run semi-autonomously and even autonomously, according to media sources.

The investment amounts in the center still remained unknown. It is likely to be located in Tianjin, people with knowledge of the deal revealed.

BMW said the new computing center will provide it with necessary infrastructures to develop autonomous cars taking advantage of Tencent's strengths in cloud computing and big data.

The German auto giant is pushing ahead with the development of autonomous driving business in China with an intention to introduce semi-autonomous or Level 3 cars in this country in 2021. The plan would need great computing capability to analyze real-time flow of digital data about traffic conditions.

Just a few days ago, BMW China Automotive Trading Ltd. entered into an agreement with NavInfo, a Beijing-based navigation map provider, who will provide BMW's China branch with high-definition (HD) map service for autonomous vehicles, marking a great step on the German automaker's path to autonomous driving in China. 

BMW is standing on the front line in terms of autonomous driving deployment in China, the world's most potential market with extremely complex road conditions.

On May 14th 2018, BMW Group officially obtained the Shanghai Intelligent Connected Autonomous Driving Test License issued by Shanghai's local authorities, becoming the first international automaker that was given go-ahead to carry out autonomous vehicle road tests.

In addition, BMW was also the first to demonstrate and publish L3 highly autonomous driving on a designated highway under government supervision in Chengdu as early as 2016.