BMW & Microsoft: Turbocharging Vehicle Development With AI

The automotive industry faces unprecedented pressure to accelerate vehicle development cycles.
As cars become more technologically complex, and the industry shifts toward software-defined vehicles, manufacturers must process increasing volumes of test data while reducing time to market.
This means that traditional development methods, which relied on physical data transfer and manual analysis, no longer meet the demands of modern vehicle complexity – leading manufacturers to require real-time access to test data.
BMW Group has addressed this challenge by transforming its vehicle development process through cloud computing and AI, moving from manual data collection to real-time analysis using Microsoft's Azure platform.

BMW implements Azure AI for development fleet

Before 2018, BMW's development fleet relied on physical hard drives to transfer data, with engineers waiting at least 24 hours to access information for analysis.
Now, Sebastian Heinz, Mobile Data Recorder (MDR) Co-Creator at BMW Group, outlines the integration challenge BMW faces: "BMW is a master of integration. Our focus is to create a car that really fits the customer.
“That requires integration of thousands of digital components."
The MDR system, an Internet of Things (IoT) device integrated into test vehicles' networks, monitors more than 10,000 signals twice per second and the data transmits to a centralised cloud platform powered by Microsoft Azure's suite of AI services.
The implementation uses multiple Azure services, including Azure AI Foundry and Azure OpenAI Service, to process the data.
The system includes an MDR copilot powered by GPT-4, accessed through a web application, which converts natural language queries into technical database searches.
Meanwhile, the system architecture also includes Azure IoT Hub for device management and Azure Databricks for data processing.
Both front-end and back-end services operate as microservices on Azure Kubernetes Service, providing responsive user interaction.
"For our time-series analytics, Azure Data Explorer was the only way to go," Sebastian says, referring to Microsoft's data analysis service that processes large volumes of streaming data.

BMW democratises data access through AI

The deployment began with 50 test vehicles and expanded as the team identified new applications. Now, two-way transmission capabilities enable real-time configuration changes to test vehicles.
The system stores data in Azure Database for PostgreSQL, which maintains copilot interactions, conversations and feedback to improve machine learning capabilities over time. This includes vectors for database queries and chat patterns.
"The Azure AI works smoothly, significantly lowers the entry barrier, and will open up a much wider range of applications," Sebastian adds.
The company also uses Microsoft Power BI to visualise data for non-technical staff.
"We can put very complex raw data into an understandable and comprehensive web interface so many BMW Group employees who aren't engineers are also able to access it," explains Christof Gebhart, Mobile Data Recorder Co-Creator at BMW Group.

BMW development process transformation

The cloud-based system has doubled the volume of vehicle data processed while increasing analysis speed by a factor of 10, reducing the time required for insights from days to hours or minutes.
"The MDR system has been critical for the development of all our cars since 2020," Christof says.
The platform also enables engineers to send configuration changes back to development vehicles for additional testing, creating faster feedback loops.
The company continues to explore additional Microsoft services, including Microsoft Fabric for unified data management and visualisation.
"There are always new and innovative Azure features – and our development process benefits strongly from that," Sebastian notes.
"Azure is the turbocharger for delivering the right data to the right person on a large scale," Christof adds. "BMW has always blended luxury and performance with cutting-edge technologies. With Microsoft's cloud and AI leadership, we could capture the potential of our MDR system to accelerate development of our innovative cars.
“The MDR, powered by Microsoft Azure, ensures BMW reliability and quality long before the cars hit the road."

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