Daimler, BMW partner on ADAS, AV

“We should not invent this complicated wheel twice,” says Daimler director Loa Kaellenius, “it makes sense to share some of these investments.”

The move may have been prompted by Daimler’s woeful performance in recent autonomous driving statistics provided by the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

According to the DMV, in self-driving Mercedes cars being tested in California, the on-board safety driver had to take over control of the car, on average, once every one and a half miles because of problems with the autonomous driving system.

In the case of Waymo, the safety driver only had to take over once every 11,000 miles.

BMW already has driverless car alliances with Bosch, Intel and Fiat Chrysler as well as Chinese manufacturers.

BMW and Daimler will pick potential suppliers of ADAS and AV technologies and seek to form standards and influence future regulation.

“It is a chicken and egg situation. Somebody has to standardise the technology and regulation will follow,” says BMW’s development director Klaus Froehlich.