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US computer chip giant Intel announced on March 13 its plans to purchase Israeli technology firm Mobileye for over $15 billion. The deal is the largest ever cross-border acquisition for an Israeli technology firm, according to Israeli media. The two firms have already collaborated with German automaker BMW to develop autonomous vehicles.

"The combination is expected to accelerate innovation for the automotive industry and position Intel as a leading technology provider in the fast-growing market for highly and fully autonomous vehicles," said a statement by the two companies which added that the deal was worth approximately $15.3 billion.

"Intel estimates the vehicle systems, data and services market opportunity to be up to $70 billion by 2030," the statement added.

BMW announced last year its plans to join with Mobileye and Intel on an autonomous vehicle project for "highly and fully automated driving" planning to go commercial by 2021. BMW said in January that it would deploy 40 self-driving cars for tests in the US and Europe.

In August, Mobileye and UK-based auto-equipment maker Delphi said they were teaming up to develop an autonomous driving system which would be ready for vehicle-makers in 2019. Mobileye, which also develops systems for accident avoidance, has concluded an agreement with Volkswagen on road data technology as well.

BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye announced on January 8, 2017, that a fleet of approximately 40 autonomous BMW vehicles will be on the roads by the second half of 2017, demonstrating the significant advancements made by the three companies towards fully autonomous driving. Revealing this at a podium discussion held during a joint press conference at CES, the companies explained that the BMW 7 Series will employ cutting-edge Intel and Mobileye technologies during global trials starting in the US and Europe.

This news follows the partnership that was announced between the BMW Group, Intel and Mobileye in July of last year. The companies have since developed a scalable architecture that can be adopted by other automotive developers and carmakers to pursue state of the art designs and create differentiated brands. The offerings scale from individual key integrated modules to a complete end-to-end solution providing a wide range of differentiated consumer experiences.

"Making autonomous driving a reality for our customers is the shared ambition behind our cooperation with Intel and Mobileye,” stated Klaus Fröhlich, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG for Development. “This partnership has all of the skills and talent necessary to overcome the enormous technological challenges ahead and commercialize self-driving vehicles. Therefore, we are already thinking in terms of scalability and welcome other companies – manufacturers, suppliers or technology companies – to participate and contribute to our autonomous platform.

“This year our fleet of vehicles will already test this joint technology globally under real traffic conditions. This is a significant step towards the introduction of the BMW iNEXT in 2021, which will be the BMW Group’s first fully autonomous vehicle.”

“From an industry perspective, we are already seeing savings and speed in development by sharing development costs and in pooling resources to develop a complete autonomous platform. The car to cloud system will perform with consistent, predictable behavior and is validated to the highest level of safety,” said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich. “That’s why this partnership is breaking new ground. We have established a dedicated team with clear, shared goals and a culture of innovation, agility and accountability.”

“Over the last six months, we have made very good progress in designing a state-of-the-art solution for autonomous driving on both highways and in urban areas. The solution has been defined in a scalable manner to allow affiliate automakers to meet their unique needs,” said Mobileye Co-Founder, Chairman and CTO Professor Amnon Shashua.

As part of this partnership, the BMW Group will be responsible for driving control and dynamics, evaluation of overall functional safety including setting up a high performance simulation engine, overall component integration, production of prototypes and eventually scaling the platform via deployment partners.

Intel brings to the partnership innovative high performance computing elements that span from the vehicle to the data center. The newly launched Intel GO solution for autonomous driving offers a world class processor and FPGA technologies for the most efficient balance of performance and power, while meeting the stringent thermal and safety requirements of the automotive industry. 

Within the car, the Intel GO solution offers a scalable development and computer platform for critical functions including sensor fusion, driving policy, environment modeling, path planning and decision making.  In the data center, Intel GO offers a wide range of technologies ranging from the high performance Intel Xeon processors, to Intel Arria 10 FPGAs and Intel Solid State Drives to the Intel Nervana platform for artificial intelligence that provides a powerful machine and deep learning training and simulation infrastructure required for the autonomous driving industry.

Mobileye contributes its proprietary EyeQ 5 high-performance computer vision processor offering automotive-grade functional safety and low-power performance. The EyeQ 5 is responsible for processing and interpretation of input from the 360-degree surround view vision sensors as well as localization. EyeQ 5, in combination with Intel CPU and FPGA technologies, forms the Central Computing Platform to be integrated into each autonomous vehicle.

Mobileye will further collaborate with the BMW Group to develop the sensor fusion solution, creating a full model of the environment surrounding the vehicle, using input from vision, radar, and lidar sensors. As well as establishing a driving policy, including Mobileye’s reinforcement learning algorithms used to endow the vehicle system with the artificial intelligence required to safely negotiate complex driving situations.

To further propel the development of the autonomous platform, the partnership plans to release hardware samples and software updates in the upcoming years. The BMW iNEXT model, which will be introduced in 2021, will be the foundation for BMW Group’s autonomous driving strategy. Following this vehicle, a range of highly automated models from all BMW Group brands will follow.

SK Telecom has demonstrated what is says is the world’s first 5G-based connected car, named T5, using what it claims to be the world largest millimeter wave 5G trial network operating in the 28GHz band at BMW driving center on Yeongjong Island, Incheon.

SK Telecom said the 5G trial network – supplied by Ericsson - covers an area of 240,000 square meters and supports more than 20Gbps peak data rates with sub-millisecond latency. SK Telecom and Ericsson have jointly developed and deployed the 5G radio and core network infrastructure to cover the whole driving center.

For the demonstration, SK Telecom worked with BMW Group Korea to install 5G terminals within two BMW vehicles.

SK Telecom said the demonstration “Realized … the powerful combination of 5G and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technologies [with] T5 providing innovative features that dramatically improve road safety and driving experience by supporting ultra-low latency communication between vehicles or the vehicle and its environment.”

T5 was able to observe road conditions enabled by state-of-the-art video recognition camera installed within the vehicle so as to provide notifications and assisted-driving to drivers, SK Telecom said.

Simultaneously T5 uplinked ultra-high-definition (UHD) video taken by 4K cameras and a 360-degree camera installed both inside and outside of the vehicle to the control center set up for the audience to watch the demonstration on large screen displays.

Alex Jinsung Choi, the CTO and Head of SK Telecom’s Corporate R&D Center, said: “5G will offer much more than just faster data speeds. It will serve as a true enabler for a whole new variety of powerful services that deliver unprecedented value to customers. Today’s demonstration of 5G-based connected car technologies marks the very first step towards achieving fully autonomous driving in the upcoming era of 5G.”

Kim Hyo-joon, the CEO of BMW Group Korea, added: “At present, global automakers are expanding partnerships and collaborations to gain an edge in the area of future mobility realized through 5G. The cooperation between BMW and SK Telecom will lay the foundation for 5G-based connected car technologies, and inspire us to achieve more innovations.”

More 5G trials on the way
Meanwhile, SK Telecom has also unveiled plans to deploy and operate 5G trial networks in Seoul and other select metropolitan area through cooperation with global telecommunications equipment manufacturers including Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung Electronics starting from early 2017.

BMW is just as famous for its motorcycles as it is for its premium cars. According to the German automaker, in the future, motorcycle riders will no longer need to wear helmets or padded clothing. Riders also won’t need to put their feet on the ground when they stop, because BMW’s smart motorcycle of the future will balance itself and help its driver to avoid crashes.

The BMW Motorrad Vision Next 100 was revealed in California recently, offering a glimpse into what motorcycles of the future will look like decades from now, according to BMW designers. Motorcycles will be just as exciting as they are now, but a lot safer. For example, balancing wheels will expel the need for a kickstand, and the smart vehicle will also feature an “electronic safety cage” that’s able to communicate with other vehicles on the road through sensors so that it can automatically avoid crashes, CNN reported.

BMW has presented an ambitious concept, and it’s important to remember that it is just that: a concept. It’s unclear just how much of the technology presented in the Motorrad Vision Next 100 will be able to be implemented by BMW. A production model hasn’t been announced. The bike would be powered by an electric motor as opposed to a gasoline engine, BMW says. But BMW’s charismatic motorcycle appeal will not lose its famous shape of flat-twin engines with the cylinders coming out the sides.

Another notable safety feature of the concept vehicle is its flexible frame which could bend as the bike steers, eliminating the need for joints, and also making it much safer if it comes into impact. There would be no traditional shock absorbers, and the tires would smooth the ride themselves, says CNN. They would also have a variable tread that adjusts itself to suit different road conditions. The bike is the last of the BMW Next 100 concept vehicles unveiled in celebration of BMW’s 100th anniversary.