Gaole: The “BMW” in the electric era means that people dare to drive, think and keep opening

The so-called BMW sense is not about how fast the technology can run, but about how you always know what you can control.

During the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show, BMW Group Director Gao Le accepted a collective interview with Chinese media.

Faced with the rush of AI competitions, intelligent display of skills and price wars in the industry, Gaole has focused on three simple words: "system", "control" and "responsibility". He did not avoid technological upgrades, but repeatedly emphasized that BMW's goal is not to make intelligence "look strong", but to make drivers "really dare to use, willing to use, and continue to use."

In summary, what BMW focuses on in intelligent competition is not the accumulation of surface functions, but how to truly transform intelligent capabilities into experiences that users can trust.

This is not a sentence, but a path choice. In today's industry context, where "the more ruthless the verb is, the more rumored it is", Gaole responds to external concerns with an extremely restrained logic: BMW is not trying to grab hot words or perform on stage, but is rebuilding a set of product logic of "system collaboration + user trust". Compared with many brands betting on the "perception experience" of big model assistants and voice interaction, BMW is more concerned about whether the system can operate stably and whether it can "speak clearly and retreat steadily" at critical moments.

This also made "trust" - a word that gradually faded out at many press conferences, return to the center of the intelligent discourse system. For BMW, this is not only a user experience, but also an anchor point of product philosophy.

The so-called luxury is not about running fast, but about always knowing what you are doing.

01

"Horse power is easy to get, but driving is hard to find"

"For the past 20 years, we have been talking about driving fun. But in the era of electric vehicles, horsepower is already easy to obtain, and that 'power stimulation' is no longer a scarce experience. So the question is - what is the future driving fun?" In the interview, Gaole first raised such a question.

This is also the starting point for BMW to redefine "brand capabilities" in the electric era.

Before this Shanghai Auto Show, BMW brought its own new generation driving control concept car with a torque of 18,000N·m on wheels, and completed a very impactful dynamic performance show.

This dynamic high-performance test platform not only has extremely fast-responsive electric drive control, but also demonstrates almost zero delay power release, millisecond-level information processing speed and distributed rear wheel torque adjustment capabilities in dynamic demonstrations.

Subsequently, it made its official debut at the auto show, becoming the most powerful footnote to BMW's "can drive fun in the electric era."

In Gaulle's view, BMW's future-oriented cars cannot be perceived just for perception, or for automatic purposes, but must deal with three key issues:

·When smart driving is involved, can we always draw the control boundaries and achieve "clear rights and responsibilities"?

·During the use process, does the driver always know his role positioning and when should he intervene?

·Can the system remain predictable, fallbackable and explainable in the face of a complex and uncertain real traffic environment?

This sounds more like a set of product ethics than a market function point. But it is precisely the core of the "trusted driving control system" in the era of BMW's electrification - not crossing the line, not vague, and not over-promising.

At this auto show, BMW's "Driving Control Super Brain" exhibited is a concrete manifestation of this concept.

This system was independently developed by the BMW engineering team, and for the first time, deeply integrated the power control domain and the chassis control domain, realizing precise control and intelligent joint coordination of the vehicle in high dynamic driving scenarios. It not only improves the stability of the vehicle in emergency situations through millisecond-level response steering system, but also allows drivers to obtain highly consistent and predictable handling feedback under different road conditions with the help of distributed electric drive and torque vectoring.

This is not an abstract technical concept, but a closed loop of capabilities that truly build trust at the level of "dare to open".

More importantly, it does not try to replace the driver, but uses a coordinated decision-making mechanism to enhance the sense of trust and control in driving.

"Technology is not to replace you, but to enhance you," said Gao Le.

02

The Chinese market is not just about implementation, but about defining capabilities.

In the process of intelligent transformation of vehicle, Gaole repeatedly emphasized BMW's new positioning for the Chinese market: not a "production center" or "user market", but a "capacity co-builder" and a "system collaborator".

"We are not just integrating technology, but in the Chinese market, together with the Chinese team, we understand the real needs of users and define what meaningful intelligence is." This statement is not a general term, but a reflection of the changes in the logic level of BMW's internal product.

Currently, BMW has four major R&D centers, three software companies in China, and has more than 3,000 software and product engineers - this is no longer auxiliary technical support, but a local team with complete link dominance capabilities.

Gaole clearly mentioned that more than 70% of BMW's new generation operating system X were developed and completed by local Chinese teams.

In his opinion, China is a dual-driven market with "rapid technology evolution" and "extremely high user intelligent experience requirements". In such an environment, local teams not only understand the scenario and have linguistic and cultural advantages, but more importantly, their ability to "ask questions" and "dominate the rhythm of the product" is mature.

"We are not implementing the technology of our headquarters in China, but bringing China's experience and achievements back to the world," said Gao Le.

This means that China is becoming the first to understand needs, propose solutions, and begin to "feed back the path logic" to BMW's global intelligent strategic architecture. This reverse empowerment is the fundamental manifestation of BMW's structural changes in the definition of China's role.

However, BMW always believes that in the Chinese market, technology is not something that can be displayed at the first time, but the ability to verify it in time.

03

Don't steal the air, but judge the direction

Speaking of the issues of new energy transformation, high-speed growth and price war that the industry is generally focused on, Gaole's attitude is extremely clear: "The growth of the new energy market is structural and long-term trend, but it does not mean that all market choices are sustainable."

What he said is "sustainability" is not a slogan at the environmental level, but a structural balance between products, organizations, profits and user values. Many brands are "losing money to sell cars" in exchange for superficial delivery data and phased growth, and BMW does not recognize this growth path.

BMW chose not to aggressively focus on a certain track, but to build a longer-term and systematic path:

It not only retains high-end fuel vehicles as the fulcrum of brand stability, but also firmly invests in smart electric platforms as the direction of technological evolution. At the same time, we continue to deepen our efforts in the field of hydrogen energy, regard it as a "medium-term strategic elastic technology" and do not make easy choices.

Whether it is the full production of the new generation of domestic models in Shenyang, the cross-platform construction of software architecture, or the steady investment in medium-term technology routes such as hydrogen energy, every step of BMW points to a lower level goal of a longer cycle and more stable system: not to win a press conference, but to support a continuous evolutionary architecture.

This is not the technology "sharing risks", but the product "building flexibility".

In fact, from the initial practice of electrification transformation to today's full-dimensional technology company vision, BMW has never sacrificed its consistent product system and brand philosophy to pursue short-term hot spots.

Many brands are competing for technology limits around smart driving, and BMW chooses to set the bottom line of experience. Behind this strategy is BMW's true definition of the "new generation":

It is not a collective label for a certain electric vehicle model, but a cross-platform, cross-organization, and cross-user structure product logic reconstruction. The real core is not who produces the functions first and who sells faster, but who can build a product system that can adapt to long-term evolution.

Fast is a gust of wind, and stability is a structure.

According to BMW's plan, the first new generation model will be put into production in Shenyang's latest Rida production area in 2026. This will set off a new generation of BMW's offensive in China.

"From the power form, to the smart cockpit, to the synergistic approach of manufacturing and R&D systems, we are not making a product, but reconstructing a complete set of 'next-generation BMW' logic," said Gao Le. This is not a style adjustment, but an update of the underlying strategy - making every transformation of BMW have a rhythm, resilience and accumulation.