BMW eyes world of driverless cars as it turns 100March 5, 2016 - 17:35 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - After a century building what it calls the "ultimate driving machine," BMW is preparing for a world in which its customers will be mere passengers, and the cars will do the driving themselves, Reuters reports. Days before BMW's 100th birthday, its board member for research and development described plans for a completely overhauled company, where half the R&D staff will be computer programmers, competing with the likes of Google parent Alphabet to build the brains for self-driving cars. "For me it is a core competence to have the most intelligent car," Klaus Froehlich told Reuters in an interview at the Geneva auto show. As a high tech world opens new business opportunities, BMW sees its competitors as including firms like internet taxi service Uber and sales website Truecar, which Froehlich described as "new intermediaries." "Our task is to preserve our business model without surrendering it to an internet player. Otherwise we will end up as the Foxconn for a company like Apple, delivering only the metal bodies for them," Froehlich said. BMW will have to ramp up quickly, striking deals with a new network of suppliers, many from outside the traditional automotive industry. "We have some catching up to do in the area of machine learning and artificial intelligence,” Froehlich said. Currently, software engineers make up just 20 percent of the 30,000 employees, contractors and supplier staff that work on research and development for BMW. "Going forward we will sell electric drivetrains," Froehlich said. "We see many smaller manufacturers who cannot afford to develop a plug-in hybrid.” Top stories Yerevan will host the 2024 edition of the World Congress On Information Technology (WCIT). Rustam Badasyan said due to the lack of such regulation, the state budget is deprived of VAT revenues. Krisp’s smart noise suppression tech silences ambient sounds and isolates your voice for calls. Gurgen Khachatryan claimed that the "illegalities have been taking place in 2020." Partner news Most popular in the section | Get Started: An educational platform for young startuppers The Get Started program which operates in two phases is an important platform for young startuppers. Byblos Bank Armenia celebrates Students' Day with scholarship recipients YSU students who received scholarships from Byblos Bank Armenia gathered in a casual setting to meet with the Bank's CEO, Hayk Stepanyan. Azerbaijan extends Rune Vardanyan’s arrest by 5 months A court in Azerbaijan has extended the arrest of former Nagorno-Karabakh leader Ruben Vardanyan by five months. Armenia border residents dissatisfied with delimitation Residents Kirants are dissatisfied with the results of the delimitation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. |