BMW, Alibaba Group announced AI joint venture

BMW and Alibaba Group have announced they will join forces to produce Artificial Intelligence (AI) vehicles in China as the tech giant seeks to monetise its emerging products and the German car-maker works to catch-up on the tech offerings on Chinese domestic brands.

According to an Automotive News Europe report, BMW will adopt AI cockpit technology from Alibaba-backed Banma for upcoming vehicles aimed at the Chinese domestic market, Banma’s software technology a collaboration with Alibaba-owned Qwen.

As elsewhere, software has become a key differentiator between otherwise similar electric vehicles, particularly in China, where local automakers such as BYD have raced ahead of European manufacturers.

Volkswagen Group, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have had to seek out tech partnerships from Silicon Valley to China for the tech expertise needed for their next generation of cars to compete.

BMW, which relies on China as a major market, saw sales of its namesake brand and Mini fall 13.0 per cent there last year and expects deliveries to remain muted this year.

To better compete, Alibaba will help BMW build a new intelligent personal assistant with enhanced voice recognition and trip planning features that will be rolled out next year in new models produced in China. The in-car AI agent can offer parking and nearby restaurant recommendations as well as real-time traffic light information.

Alibaba said its Qwen model has been used to great success in cars produced by Chinese automakers Xpeng, Zeekr and Leapmotor.

Automotive News Europe states that Alibaba has been aggressively pivoting its focus to AI over the past few months, pledging to invest more than 380 billion yuan ($A82.6b) on AI infrastructure such as data centres over the next three years.

CEO Eddie Wu said in February that the pursuit of artificial general intelligence is now the company’s “primary objective.”