Autonomous driving tickles our fascination, the ability to just sit back and relax while the car takes you where you want to go without requiring any input from you. Technology isn’t quite there just yet, or are the legal hurdles, however some vehicles do come with advanced semi-autonomous driving features like the Tesla Model S which can keep up with the car in front automatically and even change lanes when the indicator is pulled.
Tesla sent out these features, collectively called Autopilot, through a software update a couple of months back. Granted, people have used the features to do pretty crazy things but the fundamental concept is good enough for many to take these features seriously.
BMW cars are no stranger to technology, for example, the company’s new 7 series is capable of parking itself in and out of the garage. While there’s room to put more tech in and provide the same level of features like a Tesla BMW believes it won’t make a major push for autonomous cars until and unless they proved to be very reliable.
In an interview with Handelsblatt BMW CEO Harald Krüger said that even now the company has technology to offer an automated driving experience on motorways up to 120 kilometers per hour, it’s not going to rush jumping in to produce a new autonomous car because BMW feels its technology must be 100% reliable and that’s one major factor they’ll shoot for when working on an autonomous car.