As BMW continues to weld a position for itself in the next generation of connected and autonomous car technology, it's signed up for one more partnership that focuses on the data side of the equation. Today, IBM announced that it would be working with BMW on R&D where Watson sensors and computing will be integrated into BMW cars to pick up car data and help with new systems aimed at vehicles running more efficiently and with more personalisation for specific drivers and passengers. As part of the deal between IBM and BMW, IBM will be hacking four BMW i8 hybrid sports cars at its Munich Watson IoT HQ, turning them into prototype solutions that will run on IBM's Bluemix cloud platform. To be clear, although there are a lot of efforts underway right now in the industry to built autonomous (self-driving) cars, this is not exactly about that. Rather it's more about figuring out the best way of building systems in vehicles to help make them work better, whether or not they are being driven by humans.

As BMW continues to weld a position for itself in the next generation of connected and autonomous car technology, it's signed up for one more partnership that focuses on the data side of the equation. Today, IBM announced that it would be working with BMW on R&D where Watson sensors and computing will be integrated into BMW cars to pick up car data and help with new systems aimed at vehicles running more efficiently and with more personalisation for specific drivers and passengers. To be clear, although there are a lot of efforts underway right now in the industry to built autonomous (self-driving) cars, this is not exactly about that. Rather it's more about figuring out the best way of building systems in vehicles to help make them work better, whether or not they are being driven by humans. "We don't want to replace humans!"