German automaker BMW and Chinese tech giant Tencent have teamed up to launch a computing centre for developing semi-autonomous and autonomous vehicles (AVs) in China.
- Since BMW is looking to launch its L3 AV in China in 2021, the D3 (Data Driven Development) platform will play a huge role in data collection, simulation, validation and testing.
- As BMW has already tied up with NavInfo in February 2020 for collecting local data in China, this partnership will give a huge boost to BMW towards starting AV pilot testing.
- This deal will help Tencent to reduce dependency on the gaming segment. Tencent was trying aggressively to enter this future space of the mobility market.
- BMW has already been working with Baidu from 2014 in China for the introduction of AVs.
- The automotive industry is transforming into a connected and autonomous ecosystem but none of the automakers have expertise in data and computing systems, hence they need local players to build their own ecosystem.