BMW Superbrain Goes After Tesla and Ford

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Sep 4, 9:15AM EDT

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BMW’s technology upgrade is a direct challenge to Tesla, Ford, and Chinese electric vehicle makers.
But will car buyers see it as a new standard in EVs?

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BMW Superbrain Goes After Tesla and Ford — © imaginima / E+ via Getty Images

BMW has spent billions of dollars to launch an “all software, all the time” electric vehicle (EV). The company claims the upgrade will make its cars the most advanced vehicles in the world. The new products are a direct challenge to Tesla, Ford, and Chinese EV models that are trying to break into Europe and the United States. BMW calls the upgrade “superbrains.”

The two features BMW is counting on, according to the Financial Times, are that the vehicles have 20 times more computing power than other vehicles in the world. Somehow, this “cuts the complexity of the cars’ electronics,” the paper reports. The BMWs actually have four new superbrains. One runs the communication within the vehicle. Another runs infotainment features. The last two improve automated driving. Truly self-driving car features are the Holy Grail of the car industry. In the U.S., Tesla and Google’s Waymo are pioneering this technology. Neither has received approval for a wide release of their self-driving products.

New BMW Features

The most attractive part of the BMW upgrade technology may be that the new cars can go 500 miles on a charge. That puts it at the far end of the distance an EV can go with a single charge. BMW also claims its cars can go over 200 miles on a single 10-minute charge. EVs have struggled to convince customers that their cars can have ranges that match those of gasoline-powered cars and that customers will not have to wait 30 minutes at a charging station.

The BMW features will also be available on its gas-powered and hybrid models.

The challenge for BMW and its competition, from legacy car companies like Ford and EV companies led by Tesla, is will the driver care about technology that does not have a revolutionary set of features? Tesla is investing in upgraded self-driving tech that allows its cars to be driven without human assistance in any way. Ford and other legacy car companies have invested tens of billions of dollars to be in the sector at all. The Chinese continue to set the standard on price and advanced driving features. However, they are in the race without winners for true self-driving as well.

Is the new BMW advanced enough for car buyers to see it as a new standard in EVs, or is its work just a modest step forward? The pace of its new car sales will soon tell.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.