BMW said its zonal architecture will go into every segment, with DCAS driving in 2027

BMW Group set out its vehicle software and electronics plans in a Capital Market Day release timestamped 15:00 CEST on September 30, in a section headed “From software-defined vehicle to AI-defined vehicle.”

The group said the new zonal architecture introduced with the first Neue Klasse models would be used across all vehicle segments, which it expects to reduce complexity, draw on economies of scale and make new functions available to customers faster.

BMW said it would move agentic AI out of individual applications and into core vehicle development processes, giving support from initial technical requirements through to testing and release, with results monitored, reviewed and finally approved by developers. It named work with Mistral AI on crash simulations, combining BMW engineering datasets with Mistral’s training capability, and said it would scale the approach through what it calls Large Industry Models, trained on industry-specific engineering and simulation data.

On driver assistance, the group said a Level 2++ system developed with Momenta would roll out in China with the launch of the Chinese variant of the BMW iX3. It said development cooperation with Qualcomm would make it among the first manufacturers to offer navigation-guided driver assistance in Germany — on highways, secondary roads and city streets — next year under the new DCAS regulation, which it described as a Europe-wide legal framework for Driver Control Assistance Systems. Other countries, including the United States, follow in stages, and BMW said customers driving the new vehicle generation would be able to activate the additional features over the air.

The group also said it would offer Highway Assistant with hands-free assisted driving in 21 countries by the end of the year, and that its customers had already driven more than 250 million kilometers hands-free with the system.