After 100 years of producing what it calls the "ultimate driving machine," BMW is now geared toward building the "most intelligent" car. A big part of this plan requires the company to overhaul its workforce
The German automaker is centering its attention on developing its very own self-driving electric car to rival the likes of the Google Car by Alphabet, which is presently beefing up its autonomous vehicle.
"For me, it is a core competence to have the most intelligent car," Klaus Froehlich told Reuters at the Geneva Auto Show. He adds that overhauling the labor force will include hiring enough computer programmers until they make up half of the R&D team in the next five years.
This means BMW need a manpower equivalent to another 15,000 through 20,000 "from partnerships with suppliers and elsewhere" because he said German schools are not producing viable candidates for the company to hire all its needed tech engineers.
The company also sees its future rivals in Uber and car-price comparison website TrueCar, which the board member described as "new intermediaries." He went on to say that the company's task is to preserve its business model "without surrendering to an Internet player."
"Otherwise, we will end up as the Foxconn for a company like Apple, delivering only the metal bodies for them," he said.
Froehlich said that in the future, aside from the putting its electric vehicles on the market, the company will also sell electric drivetrains to manufacturers that cannot afford to come up with a plug-in hybrid.
While the aim is for BMW to build its very own in-house expertise in the next five to six years, there is a big chance the company is going to deal with new outside suppliers, too. One area the automaker will need partners is in cloud computing.
Recently, BMW has finally made its 2016 BMW M2 available for purchase in a few markets. Despite the car's entry-level status, experts everywhere consider it "magnificent," "perfect" and "amazing."
