Speaker 1: We are here outside CES 2024 in BMW’s booth, taking a look at the automaker’s remote valet parking concept. Now, what this does is it allows a remote operator to take control of and move A BMW vehicle at low speeds. Now, why would you want to do that? Let’s imagine that I own a fleet of BMWs and I need to move that IX over there in the parking lot from one space to another rather than going [00:00:30] out and getting in the car. I can access it from this station right here. I’ve got a steering wheel, much like what you see in a racing sim pedals and controls here on the screens. I’ve got screens up here that show me all of the driver aid information and systems from the car, including the steering trajectory lines and the parked distance sensors, so I can just put it in a drive and take over the car.

Speaker 1: Now at the speeds this thing operates, I only need one pedal for driving, and that’s the gas pedal. So I step on the pedal and the car [00:01:00] starts moving. If I lift off the pedal, it comes to a stop. Now I’ve only got maybe five kilometers per hour that I can do with the speed because it is remote and you don’t want to actually run into something from a distance. Pretty good responsiveness here, not a whole lot of lag. And again, it feels a lot like sort of driving a car in a gaming sim. Now, if you ever get too close to a wall or something like that, or a pedestrian walks in front, your regular driver aid systems will kick in [00:01:30] and the car will come to a stop. So now the advantage of doing this remotely is that now I could take control of another vehicle.

Speaker 1: I could command a fleet of dozens of BMW cars. In a consumer situation, someone could pull up to a valet at a restaurant that supports BMW remote valet parking, and I could move their car into a parking space while they go inside the restaurant and enjoy their meal. And I think that the reason they put this sort of one pedal driving slightly [00:02:00] laggy, low speed sort of throttle is that you don’t want the car getting away from you if there is any latency in the connection, basically, I’ve got the pedal matted right now, and the car will go as fast as it needs to complete the operation. Now, BMW’s developed this technology in partnership with supplier Vallejo, and the brilliant thing about it is that it uses pretty much all of the sensors and connectivity that’s already built into the vehicle. BMW did a lot of looking forward when they developed their new platform of vehicle for connectivity. So there’s not a whole lot you have [00:02:30] to do to get the car to a point where you could remotely control it like this. This is just one of many technologies that BMW is showcasing at CEF this year. Be sure to head over to cnet.com to see even more of what they got in store and to check out the rest of what’s happening around the show.