BMW and Baidu: It’s complicated

Yesterday Baidu announced that it had started testing self-driving vehicles in Wuzhen but that its relationship with BMW is on the rocks “because the development pace and the ideas of the two companies are a little different.” Those are the words of BMW’s China CEO Olaf Kastner. This is the same BMW that has entered a partnership with Mobileye and Intel that involves the development of level 3 and 4 vehicles. With level 3 cars, drivers can cede full control of a car in certain situations and then retake control when required. In level 4, the car takes control of all safety-critical functions for an entire trip without any human intervention. This is the same Mobileye that dumped Tesla over its fatal ‘Autopilot’ crash. Telenovela .