At the end of last year, Daimler and the BMW Group announced that they are negotiating the signing of a comprehensive partnership aiming at the development of common autonomous technologies with the main goal of reducing costs. Six months later, the two German builders announced the official signing of the contract for this collaboration.

The partnership provides the two manufacturers will jointly develop support systems, autonomous driving technologies for motorway use and technologies for automatic parking, all complying with the autonomy levels 4 and 5.

In addition, the two companies are still in negotiations to extend cooperation in the autonomous systems for urban areas, which are significantly more difficult to implement. Also, BMW and Daimler said the partnership is not exclusive, so other manufacturers can get involved.

The first such systems resulting from the collaboration will be available on Mercedes-Benz and BMW series models starting in 2024, while the technical solutions will be implemented independently by each manufacturer.

The partnership provides for close cooperation between more than 1,200 specialists from the Campus for Autonomous Driving in Unterschleissheim (near Munich), the Mercedes-Benz Technology Center in Sindelfingen and the Testing Technology Center and Daimler from Immendingen.

The new partnership comes just months after BMW and Daimler have officially unified their car sharing, car rental, car parks, and electric car charging services divisions.