BMW has pledged that its first software-defined vehicle, the new BMW iX3, won’t suffer from the software issues that have hampered rival firms.
The electric SUV, revealed at the recent Munich motor show, sits on a new EV platform and features a new computing architecture built around four ‘supercomputer’ chips that run all of the vehicle's key functions.
BMW has developed the entire software stack for the system in-house.
While rivals such as Volvo and the Volkswagen Group have struggled with their efforts to develop software-defined vehicles, BMW’s Neue Klasse chief, Mike Reichelt, is confident his firm will avoid bugs and issues.
“For us it was really important [to develop the software stack in-house],” said Reichelt. “It’s like the transformation from the combustion engine to electric mobility: the biggest step is when you reach this change in the middle of the company.
“Every engineer at BMW is dealing with this new technology. Every function in the car has a hardware part and a software part, so we speak about function and owner and not about the hardware side or software side.
"Every engineer has to go into the digital world; that’s the transformation.
“For me, it’s a failure when you believe you can take digital development outside the company or to another part of the company and the rest makes cars like it has for the last 20 years. So we changed it.
"For example, in our Driving Experience department, half of the engineers work in electrics or electronics, and it’s a little bit more every month.”
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I was impressed with the i3X that I saw at the Munich show. Whilst I know BMW's styling has long been divisive I thought the i3X looked cleaner and simpler than BMW's recent designs and the retro Neue Klasse kidney grilles were rather nice. BMW have a pretty good history in development of both hardware and software so I have quite good confidence that their new systems will be largely bug free at launch but I guess we are going to have to wait and see.
"BMW has developed the entire software stack for the system in-house."
I doubt they did the underlying operating system or the build tools or the programming language or... They will, like all good software systems, be relying on thousands of 3rd party systems.
3rd party systems can be good, just look at the ZF transmission BMW has used for many years.
And bugs are endemic to everything we do whether it be hardware or software. They take time to iron out, normally just in time for the neue klasse with all new bugs :)
"Every engineer" should have to live with the software they produce for at least 6 months in the real world before it's released.