A million cars drove themselves through BMW plants. Who was driving?
BMW Group has moved one million new vehicles without a driver inside its plants using Automated Driving In-Plant. MINI Oxford is the fourth site, Spartanburg is next.
In a BMW plant, a freshly built car can now head to the next station on its own, with nobody behind the wheel. It is not a demo: the German group says it has reached one million vehicles moved this way, using a technology called Automated Driving In-Plant (AFW). MINI Plant Oxford has become the fourth site to use it.
What BMW announced
According to the BMW Group release of 30 October 2026, AFW has gone from a pilot project (Dingolfing, 2022) to a production standard. It now runs in Dingolfing, Leipzig, Regensburg and Oxford, with around 3,500 automated movements a day across the network. Oxford alone logged more than 53,000 in the past year. Spartanburg in the US is next, from 2027.
How a car moves through a plant with no driver
The key is that the sensors sit in the plant, not in the car. LiDAR sensors along the route constantly scan the area, while cloud-based software plans each movement. That means any new car can be moved automatically, regardless of its specification. The system reacts to people, other vehicles, automated carts and temporary obstacles, and is CE-certified. It was developed with Swiss company Embotech, in which BMW i Ventures invested in December 2024.
Oxford goes one step further: the car is automatically positioned next to a lifting device where a specific operation is carried out. It is the first group plant where AFW is linked directly to existing control systems.
Why it matters
"One million vehicles moved using automated driving technology demonstrates the innovative strength and scaling capabilities of our production network," said Raymond Wittmann, BMW AG board member for Production. For BMW, AFW is part of its iFACTORY push towards more digital production with less logistics downtime.
What it means for drivers
Nothing changes directly in the car you buy: AFW is not a self-driving system for public roads. Indirectly, more efficient in-plant logistics helps costs and delivery times, including for BMW and MINI EVs. It also shows another route to autonomy: in controlled spaces, with sensors built into the infrastructure, driverless operation already works at industrial scale.
