BMW and Tencent to develop self-driving cars together

BMW and Tencent Holdings have joined hands to develop self-driving cars in their newly planned computing centre that is said to start operations by the end of 2019. This new computing centre will provide cars with data-crunching capabilities that will help them drive semi-autonomously and ultimately in autonomous mode. The centre, built in the eastern city of Tianjin, will support BMW’s autonomous driving development and innovation in China, said Jochen Goller, head of BMW’s China operations.According to BMW, the new computing centre will use Tencent’s cloud computing and big data capabilities and provide the automobile company with the required infrastructure to develop autonomous cars. In 2021, it will introduce semi-autonomous, or L3 classification, cars in China that would require enormous amount of computing power to analyse real-time flow of digital information on road and traffic conditions.