To celebrate its centenary, BMW won’t be revealing a new supercar, as most automakers do.
Instead, as BMW’s head of sales and marketing Ian Robertson indicated, it plans to release a self-driving model.
“There will be some products we will share. But while we will celebrate a century of being in business, we will predominantly be looking at the century ahead. Maybe what I’ve been alluding to [autonomous driving] will be the direction of that.”
Discussing the development of autonomous driving technologies, Robertson said that the next phase of such technologies is the “brain off” phase, where no driver is needed, taking the next step forward from the current “feet off”, “hands off” and “eyes off” tech that is being developed. He conceded though that, largely due to safety issues, completely autonomous cars could be up to 15 years away from reaching the market.
Last year, both Audi and Mercedes-Benz both revealed autonomous concept cars in the form of the Piloted Driving Prologue Concept and the F 015 Luxury in Motion . Surely, BMW will have an answer to its main rivals in the premium segment.
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