Rene Wies-《Elite's Talk》_腾讯汽车

Meet the demand of market with technology

There is a concept car model of BMW Vision Efficient Dynamics displayed in Dr. Rene Wies’ office. “It is wholly created by science and technology. It looks like a work of art when running on the road.”commented Dr. Rene Wies, holding the car model.

Being in China for four years, Dr. Rene Wies , Senior Vice President of BMW China Services Ltd., has been working hard to make BMW cars more artistic and more suitable for the Chinese market.

Dr. Rene Wies has witnessed the rapid expansion of BMW R&D center. The team was set up in 2005 and grew to a group of 50 staff members in 2010. Since that time, BMW has decided to expand its R&D team in China. As a result, the number of staff members has grown to 600, a twelve-fold increase, and the department has become the second largest R&D center in the world, after Munich.

BMW has made this decision because compared with other traditional markets, Chinese consumers’ level of openness to advanced technological application is relatively higher. “Chinese people are more open and BMW clients are very interested in the application of new technologies and are bold enough to try them. So this is a very positive influence to our decisions.”

To meet the demands of the market, BMW has focused its R&D on the application of new technologies in China. According to Dr. Rene Wies, BMW R&D Center in China is composed of four sectors:one is the independent R&D team of BMW Brilliance who focuses on BMW Brilliance cars, such as ZINORO,“there focus is on electric vehicles, such as research,development and technological support of spare parts of electric vehicles, such as batteries.”Another one is the R&D team directly managed by BMW, including independent R&D teams in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenyang.Shanghai and Beijing team take more responsibilities in research and development of electronic system and software development with a connected driving laboratory established in Shanghai, while Shenyang team mainly serve as technology and production support for BMW Brilliance and cooperative partner Brilliance.

Dr. Rene Wies work with new technology and new products all the time. He used a on-going program to explain the role played by R&D center headed by him. He showed to Tencent Auto a car-sharing software which can be used to search for locations of BMW cars that also use this software and provide customers information about where they can find a car to share. This software has been used in other countries. This program is under development and R&D will play a key role in this process. Dr. Rene Wies said,“R&D department should identify the needs of the market and achieve it by choosing the right technology.”[detail]

Dr. Rene Wies was born in 1967, grew up in Germany and Zimbabwe. He studied Computer Science in Munich (TU Munich) between 1992 and 1995 and received his PHD degree in this major later. He joined BMW in 1997 and was appointed a number of international assignments including working in UK as manager of different departments of data, voice, IT and incorporate strategy. Dr. Rene Wies was vice president and head of IT for BMW's Engineering from 2004 to 2009. A year later, he became the head of strategy China and joint-venture coordination until 2011. Since July of 2011, Dr. Rene Wies became head of BMW's Research and Development Center in China and Senior Vice President of BMW China Services Ltd..

Art

Art is the bridge between the phenomenal world and the perfect world in mind. It has being shown in the historical period all the time. In any kind of social pattern, art is always exerting great impact on the ideology and arousing human’s nature of living together. Artists can use different representations to share their rich enlightenment, personal or collective thought with others.

No matter what technology is used, the core of BMW technology is Efficient Dynamics and Connected Drive. Dr. Rene Wies said that they are also the problems in the philosophical level in the development of BMW.

The reason why Efficient Dynamics and Connected Drive have been discussed in philosophical level is that “technically speaking, Efficient Dynamics and Connected Drive have covered all the main directions in which current and future development of automobiles may develop,”he explained,“for example, electric cars is in the scope of Efficient Dynamics while auto-drive and semi auto-drive are in the scope of Connected Drive. So Efficient Dynamics and Connected Drive can cover every area. ”

With the development of science and technology, the main directions of the two major philosophical propositions may not change but could be challenged with new issues.

As for Efficient Dynamics, faced with more and more strict emission standards and environmental pressure, BMW has to consider the contradiction between efficiency and dynamics. Dr. Rene Wies believes that the best example is the gradual shift from internal combustion engine to electric power. “A company should have according engineering, R&D and test abilities.” Dr. Rene Wies said, “take I3 for an example, a large amount of test work has been done before the development is done. We have launched real road test program, produced over 600 cars, conducted a one-year-long experiment over 16 million km and collected massive experience. ”

Connected Drive is to enrich the content successively. For example, “on the basis of sales of electric cars, we will consider more about trip service by developing car-sharing software, parking space sharing software and charging service system that can provide public charging service for electric cars.”

Dr. Rene Wies is leading BMW’s R&D team toward a mature way. The battery of 1E, the virgin product of ZINORO, BMW Brilliance, is completely made by its own R&D team. In addition, more and more technologies that are studied in China will be applied to the world market, such as voice recognition, and speed limit sign recognition.

“I can feel deeply about the passion of our R&D team for new technologies and new products, and I sometimes have to ask the headquarter to return my staff members after they go to headquarter for certain projects, because they are so excellent that the headquarter want to keep them there. China also needs these members.”

As a researcher and a veteran in automobile industry, Dr. Rene Wies has an idea that new technologies, especially electric car technologies have to be driven by high end car makers, because their clients hope to see the application of updated technologies and can also afford it.

Maybe this idea is exactly the force that is driving Dr. Rene Wies and his team in China to keep working to achieve the shared goal.[detail]

Architectural aesthetics

Architectural aesthetics has an effect on the design of architecture. Everyone has the aesthetic pursuit. Aesthetic appreciation is the highest pursuit of human’s feelings and the highest state of human’s living. Different ages or construction groups have different views on beauty and the match with the real life may also be the consideration of architectural aesthetics.

1
Tencent Auto: As there are more and more BMW car models, what are the plans to expand for BMW’s R&D in China?
Dr. Rene Wies: The increase in production scale has set a higher demand on quality control in production. For this purpose, we will improve our R&D team to help our factories and suppliers to continue raise the quality of our products. In other words, the quality should be kept at least at the same level when there is a larger scale of production. This requires us to invest more efforts to ensure the quality of future products, including discovering, identifying and solving the problems.
2
Tencent Auto: How to understand sustainable development in terms of R&D?
Dr. Rene Wies: Sustainability is a core demand of BMW, which is embodied not only by the products. Firstly, the products of BMW pay great attention to sustainability; another highly-valued characteristic of BMW is is driving experience. Our goal is to make cars that is optimized in performance, sensitivity and efficiency as a whole rather than make a muscle car that only pursue performance.
3
Tencent Auto: There has been voice of the possibility of IT companies disrupting traditional car makers. What is your take on this?
Dr. Rene Wies: I think IT companies will heavily impact the current automobile industry globally. We should keep this in mind that IT companies are helping other industries to develop in a better way. Take the mobile phone as an example - Integration of IT companies with mobile phone makers lead to the creation of smart phones; with automobile industry,to the Internet of Vehicles. IT companies can always make things more intelligent, quicker and more connected.As for automobile industry, we can see that after IT companies’ involvement, there are more and more sensors in the car, and it is more comfortable, convenient and safer to drive a car. So IT industry is bringing cars or drivers more comfort and safety by being able to sense more of the world.
4
Tencent Auto: You have lived in China for many years, can you share with us one of the most impressing or interesting stories?
Dr. Rene Wies: I am a fan of art, especially interested in Chinese modern art and traditional art. I often go to 798 (an art factory in Beijing) and visit art galleries during on the weekends. My daily work is closely related to art as well because working for BMW, we are making cars with technologies but also creating art works that run on the road. I am learning Chinese and I know that there is only one character different between art and technology in Chinese. So I think this also applies to the state of work - excellent technology can make excellent work of art.

Tech geek

Cherish talents

Nice

Prudent

Gentleman

Cautious

Low profile

Artistic

Dr. Rene Wies took out an album of Chinese modern paintings, turned to a page on which there is a painting of Chinese Characteristics, and told Tencent Auto that he had bought this painting from 798 (an art factory in Beijing).
　　I never know how a “tech geek”, who majors in IT and works in Research and Development Center, would talk about art, then Dr. Rene Wies gave me the answer. “there is only one character different between art and technology in Chinese. They both have technique in them. So I think this also applies to the state of work - excellent technology can make an excellent work of art.”
　　How to define “excellent”? Although Dr. Rene Wies himself could not give an answer, his final goal with BMW is to make clients smile. As a technician in R&D for luxury cars, he has a huge responsibility. As is explained by his own principle, he should shoulder the responsibility to drive the applications of new technologies in the whole automobile industry.