According to news on October 19, the FIZ Nord Research and Innovation Center of BMW Group has been officially put into operation recently, becoming the new core of BMW Group’s global R&D network. According to the official introduction, the center’s focus is to use digital, interconnected, and agile development processes to put future technology into mass production. Currently, the BMW Group has invested approximately 1 billion euros in the project.
Frank Weber, director of the BMW Group responsible for research and development, said that as the most important research and development base of the BMW Group in the world, FIZ Nord will focus on the company’s innovative advantages and the core competitiveness of future travel.
The total area of the FIZ Nord building complex is about 150,000 square meters, and about 4,800 automotive R&D personnel work here.
The BMW Group Research and Innovation Center (FIZ) represents the transformation of the BMW Group in automotive research and development. In terms of data processing, the new R&D center is also equipped with more than 20,000 servers with a storage capacity of more than 90PB, and the daily data exchange volume of FIZ is 115TB, which does not include the data of the Lower Schleissheim Autopilot Data Center.
At the FIZ Nord R&D center, all powertrain research and development personnel, including fuel and electric drives, work together here. This is the first time in the BMW Group. BMW said that this way of working is conducive to technical exchanges and close cooperation between developers.
In addition to drivetrain development, FIZ Nord’s vehicle integration department has more than 2,000 employees. FIZ Nord’s test building has 100 test benches and 200 laboratories. These facilities are mainly used for hardware and software inspection, testing and verification, and prototype modeling. The idea is to integrate all core functions to improve and optimize the test verification process.
In addition to the German local R&D base, BMW’s global R&D network has also been further constructed. In China, BMW has established the largest R&D system outside of Germany, with three R&D centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang. Among them, the Beijing R&D center focuses on vehicle verification, testing and diagnosis of BMW’s next-generation engine projects, and the development of core components in the fields of new energy and autonomous driving; the Shanghai R&D center is mainly responsible for innovative technology, creative design and digital applications; Shenyang R&D center Mainly responsible for vehicle development of new energy models, quality control of mass-produced models and localized production support.
Caijing.com Auto communicated with BMW Group on issues such as the construction of the domestic R&D system, but the other party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to official information, among the more than 1,100 BMW R&D personnel in China, the software development team exceeds 400.
In 2019, BMW Brilliance’s wholly-owned subsidiary-Lingyue Digital Information Technology Co., Ltd. opened in Beijing, becoming the first independent digital business company established by the BMW Group in the global market, building a customer data platform, dealer operation platform, etc. Digital infrastructure.