China is BMW’s largest market, and the German automaker is aware of with the intention to seize the nation’s demanding shoppers, its future fashions should assist sturdy autonomous driving functionality.
But to construct it itself in China is hardly attainable. The success of autonomous driving depends partly on high-definition mapping, a course of that requires an expansive assortment of geographic data. By regulation, overseas entities can’t host China-based information with out native partnerships. Apple noticeably works with a Chinese agency to retailer person emails, textual content messages and different types of digital footprint within the nation.
That seems to be one of many catalysts for BMW’s new partnership with Tencent. The Chinese tech big, which is finest recognized for WeChat and runs an increasing cloud computing enterprise, mentioned on Friday it’s organising an information computing and storage platform for the German premium carmaker. Reuters reported that the pair plans to launch the computing middle by the top of this 12 months in Tianjin, a port metropolis close to Beijing.
The tie-up got here months after BMW’s earlier information growth on this planet’s largest passenger automobile market. In February, Here — a Google Maps different partly owned by BWM — joined forces with Chinese navigation service Navinfo which might assist Here acquire information domestically. It’s maybe by no coincidence that Navinfo and Tencent each purchased small shares in Here three years in the past.
As BMW will get extra conversant in China’s street circumstances, there’s no motive why it received’t apply these information to its freshly minted ride-hailing enterprise.
Teaming up with BMW is usually a massive win for Tencent, which has been inserting extra give attention to enterprise-facing endeavors as its essential gaming enterprise copes with regulatory stress. In the world of transportation, “Tencent is committed to assisting automotive companies in the digital transformation,” mentioned Dowson Tong, the corporate’s president of Cloud and Smart Industry, in a press release.
Another relationship
BMW has beforehand wanted one other Chinese tech chief to automate its automobiles. It has been working with Baidu, the nation’s largest search engine supplier with a rising record of synthetic intelligence initiatives, on automated driving since 2014.
Last October, the duo ramped up their alliance after the German automaker joined Baidu’s autonomous driving open platform Apollo . The deal carried bigger diplomatic significance because it took place throughout Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s go to in Germany to fulfill with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Baidu president Zhang Yaqin mentioned on the time the deal was meant to “accelerate the development of autonomous driving technologies that align with the Chinese market.”
BMW’s relationship with Tencent, then again, has beforehand performed out on different fronts together with joint analysis into autonomous driving safety and testing that concerned Tencent’s famous Keen Security Lab.
Baidu and Tencent don’t compete straight for his or her core companies, however each are making a giant push into the way forward for mobility, whether or not the trouble pertains to in-car leisure or self-driving. It’s not unusual for tech rivals in China to focus on the identical accomplice. A spokeswoman for BMW advised TechCrunch that “there is no overlap in the collaboration” and the German agency is “cooperating with different top-notch Chinese companies in different fields.”
Indeed, the setup with Tencent appears extra complete at first look. The Chinese firm is offering “IT architecture, tools and platforms supporting the entire process of [BMW’s] automated driving research and development,” based on the spokeswoman. When it involves Baidu, she cited an instance of the pair engaged on a self-driving security white paper that additionally concerned ten different companions.
That is likely to be a roundabout method of claiming that the Baidu alliance is looser. It’s value stating that BMW isn’t distinctive to Apollo, which payments itself because the “Android for…
