BMW wants to crack city self-driving in 2027, and Tesla is the target

BMW is pushing its partially automated driving tech off the highway and into town. The automaker says the navigation-guided system arrives in urban environments starting in 2027, debuting in Germany before rolling to other markets.

On city streets it can help with lane changes, turns, yielding to other cars and roundabouts, using built-in GPS navigation. It also handles steering, accelerating and braking on highways. But it's a Level 2 system: hands-free is allowed only on the highway, and on local roads drivers must keep their hands on the wheel and their eyes on the road.

BMW bills the setup as a co-pilot rather than a backseat driver. Drivers can steer, brake or speed up at any moment without killing the system, and the car shows what it's seeing through a heads-up display plus a 3D map on the main screen.

The cameras and sensors are already baked into models including the 3 Series, 7 Series, X5, iX3 and iX4, so BMW can switch the feature on with an over-the-air update. The system leans on new European safety rules that, for the first time, let cars suggest and perform automated moves in city traffic. BMW says outside experts have road-tested it and confirmed it meets technical standards, with final government approval expected in early 2027.

The move plants BMW squarely in Tesla's lane. Automakers are racing to match Full Self-Driving, and BMW's next-generation Neue Klasse platform includes driver assist tech partly powered by Qualcomm. With hands-free highway driving now common in mass-market cars, city streets are the next frontier.

That frontier comes with risk. Safety researchers warn that drivers over-rely on these systems fast — even after brief use — and react more slowly than is safe when they have to take back control. There's compelling evidence that most driver-assist systems, across companies, are less safe than ordinary human driving. Like Tesla, BMW stresses that drivers remain responsible even while the system is active, though Tesla customers have successfully argued in court that the company shares blame for some crashes.