New cars drive across the site without a driver in several BMW plants. The technology from the Zurich company Embotech has reached the mark of one million movements, including in Dingolfing and Regensburg.
Since 2022, finished cars have been driving through BMW plants on their own, with nobody behind the wheel. It started as a pilot in Dingolfing, and the system now also runs in Leipzig, Regensburg and at the Mini plant in Oxford. The technology comes from Embotech, a spin-off of ETH Zurich. The mark of one million automated movements has now been reached.
The sensors are not in the car but along the route. Lidar sensors capture the surroundings, and a computer outside the vehicle plans the path ten times per second. According to The Robot Report, a separate safety architecture has been certified by TÜV SÜD.
It keeps getting faster
Around 3,500 such movements add up every day, with availability above 99.5 percent. The first 500,000 movements took 15 months, the next 500,000 only seven. The next site will be the US plant in Spartanburg in 2027. Board member for production Raymond Wittmann says the technology will be rolled out worldwide.