BMW Reveals Plans for New Vehicle Technology

09th Jan 2024

By Chris Russon

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BMW is showing its technology plans at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and they include use of augmented reality, teleoperated parking and more in-car streaming and gaming.

Visitors to the show can teleoperate a BMW iX and guide it around the exhibition site, discover as a passenger the potential offered by augmented reality glasses during a journey and experience a new generative AI capability of the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant which is powered by the Alexa large language model that enables quick answers and how-to responses on vehicle features.

Frank Weber, responsible for BMW Group Development, said: “BMW is synonymous with both the ultimate driving machine and the ultimate digital experience.”

“At the CES we are showing more content, more customisation and more gaming. This is all underpinned by our powerful, in-house developed BMW Operating System. And we will take a look to the future, of course, with perfectly integrated augmented reality and strong, reliable artificial intelligence at the interaction between human and machine.”

Vehicles fitted with BMW’s latest Operating System 9 will be able to access an extended range of products from the BMW ConnectedDrive Store.

As well as on-demand functions for the vehicle, the store also offers an ever-evolving selection of third-party apps in the categories music and audio, news and magazines and gaming for the infotainment system.

More games are now being made available via this channel for in-car enjoyment, and occupants will also be able to play using proper gaming controllers in future.

The BMW Video App, first launched in the new BMW 5 Series, is to be rolled out to further executive and luxury models over the air.

Since the end of 2023, customers driving compact models with BMW Operating System 9 have also been able to access the Video App with BMW Digital Premium.

The company says these will be followed by further models over the course of 2024, such as the BMW X2 and all models in the new MINI family.

BMW has also been working on the next generation of automated parking and in conjunction with Valeo it has developed a valet parking system in which a driver leaves their vehicle in a designated drop-off area and the car then searches for a vacant parking space itself, manoeuvres into the space and later exits it again.

The vehicle can even drive back to the pick-up area for collection by the driver.

The teleoperated valet system uses sophisticated technology and live camera images to guide and move the vehicle so that it can be parked and retrieved again in a carefully controlled manner.

Possible future applications for this technology could include parking at events, at airports or in the logistics sector.