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- BMW inaugurates Future Mobility Development Center (FMDC) in Sokolov, Czech Republic, aimed at testing its autonomous tech.
- The 1482-acre site contains a variety of roads and traffic patterns, allowing the automaker to simulate a variety of real-world environments.
- BMW is expected to offer a hands-off, eyes-off Level 3 system in its vehicles starting in 2025, joining other automakers that have also invested in such systems.
The age of autonomous vehicles hasn't yet dawned, but its impending arrival has already brought about significant changes to how automakers test cars.
Even the development of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) has altered the way cars are tested, employing all types of digital environments to put hundreds of thousands of virtual miles on cars' systems to validate them.
The Real World
Despite the growth of companies catering such simulation services, testing in physical environments is still crucial as more Level 3 and Level 4 systems approach market readiness.
Just a few days ago BMW opened its largest test site in the world, and it's aimed primarily at testing autonomous vehicles.
The new site, dubbed Future Mobility Development Center (FMDC), is located in Sokolov, Czech Republic, and it's been built in a former surface mine. The new center, covering some 1482 acres, contains a variety of simulated locations including city, freeway, country roads, and a variety of street and intersection types.
"With our new Future Mobility Development Center, we have created a one-of-a-kind test site, designed exclusively for the highly demanding testing of automated driving and parking up to level 4," said Frank Weber, BMW Board Member for Development.
Eco-Friendly
The automaker did not neglect environmental aspects in developing a site this large, using 2.2 million cubic meters of soil that had already been excavated during mining operations to construct the site. The test track also features a water management system that collects rainwater to irrigate the track.
"The special thing: We can run our test modules one after the other without stopping. This makes our testing as realistic, reliable, and customer-oriented as possible," Weber added.
When it comes to autonomous tech in the pipeline, BMW is known to be working on Level 3 tech along with autonomous developer Arriver, and chipmaker Qualcomm.
The automaker is expected to offer a hands-off, eyes-off Level 3 system in at least some of its vehicles starting in 2025, following the lead of other automakers like Honda, Volvo, and Mercedes-Benz in developing Level 3 systems. Specifically, BMW is expected to use Qualcomm's Snapdragon Ride Vision system-on-a-chip (SoC), as well as Arriver's Computer Vision tech. And Sokolov is where these systems will be tested.
Will a Level 2 or Level 3 system become a priority for you in the near future when shopping for a car, or are these systems not very important when it comes to choosing a vehicle? Let us know in the comments below.
Jay Ramey grew up around very strange European cars, and instead of seeking out something reliable and comfortable for his own personal use he has been drawn to the more adventurous side of the dependability spectrum. Despite being followed around by French cars for the past decade, he has somehow been able to avoid Citroën ownership, judging them too commonplace, and is currently looking at cars from the former Czechoslovakia. Jay has been with Autoweek since 2013.
