Video Transcript
A major luxury automaker has developed a novel way to more efficiently shuttle in-production vehicles around its sprawling assembly facilities: by letting them, in effect, drive themselves.
BMW cars being built at a factory in Southeast Germany can maneuver autonomously from the plant’s assembly area to a test course to the finishing area — a journey that CarScoops reports is more than half a mile long.
What’s more, the company soon plans to deploy the same technology at factories across Europe.
The initiative began as a pilot project at the company’s Dingolfing plant in 2022. Rather than equip the factory’s 5-Series and 7-Series models with self-driving capabilities, however, the plant instead installed external systems — including an environmental model, movement planner, and Lidar sensors — that guide the cars remotely through the campus.
As a result, each car can maneuver itself through the assembly and finishing process regardless of its particular tech options.
A BMW official said that the system offered "significant” improvement in the plant’s logistics efficiency and helped optimize the manufacturing process overall.
The technology is currently advancing from the pilot phase to standard practice at the Dingolfing plant, and BMW plans to bring it to other facilities, as well, including sites in Leipzig and Regensburg, Germany; its Oxford, England, factory; and an under-construction plant in Debrecen, Hungary.
