BMW and Valeo develop self-parking cars

BMW and French supplier Valeo will deepen their collaboration. The two partners now aim to develop an autonomous parking system.

The BMW group and Valeo, which are already working together on several projects, announced the signing of a new agreement to develop autonomous parking technology. The two partners have set the goal of designing a level 4 system, capable of handling maneuvers entirely automatically, without human intervention.

The studies, which will involve around a hundred people from both companies, will not only focus on technologies embedded in vehicles. BMW and its French partner will work on an entire ecosystem, which will also include connected services and infrastructure to be installed in parking lots so that the system can be operated.

BMW and Valeo follow in the footsteps of Mercedes and Bosch

“Building on already marketed software components, this cooperation will leverage our expertise and technologies, such as advanced computer vision algorithms based on AI, and will allow us to expand our portfolio with level 4 autonomous functions as well as cloud services”, said Marc Vrecko, head of comfort systems and driver assistance at Valeo.

The exact date for this new feature has not been announced. BMW simply states that it will be available on the electric vehicles of the Neue Klasse, which are expected to gradually hit the market starting in 2025. On the side of Mercedes, autonomous parking is already nearly a reality. With its partner Bosch, the star brand has obtained approval from German authorities for its level 4 technology. This is integrated into the Intelligent Park Pilot driving system, available on the S-Class and EQS. It could be used as early as this year in a parking lot at Stuttgart airport.

Read also: Autonomous driving: Mercedes surpasses Tesla with the Drive Pilot system