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"Welcome to your ride," says a slick, computer-synthesised voice through the BMW i3's speakers as we buckle up in the rear passenger seat. It's silent. Eerily silent, and not just because the all-electric i3's missing any engine noise - it's also missing a driver.
Welcome to BMW's Personal CoPilot Experience, designed to give us humans a taste of what it's like to ride in an autonomous car. From the outside, it looks nothing more than a standard i3 but step inside (to the back seat, naturally), and you're greeted with a touchscreen panel featuring a handful of controls - none of which are for driving, however.
With BMW already honing its electric vehicle (EV) tech in the ABB FIA Formula E Championship as a technical partner of the MS&AD Andretti Formula E team, the German marque has also been working on driverless technology ever since James Bond steered his 7 Series through a car park in GoldenEye, using only his mobile phone. Today, you can park your 7 Series using your car key in reality - but that's just the beginning. With five levels of autonomy established - one being full human control and five involving no human interaction at all - the tech boffins at BMW are busy working their way through the levels at the marque's Autonomous Driving Campus outside Munich.
First opened in April 2018, the shiny new campus is capable of storing 2-Petabytes of data, which is the equivalent of 6.8-years worth of 24/7 Full HD video recording. With autonomous cars expected to process around 40-Terabytes of data per day, that space will be put to very good use. "To put things in perspective, the most autonomous plane in the world - an Airbus A380 - generates 2.5-Terabytes of data on an average transatlantic flight," explains BMW board member Ian Robertson.
But what does the product of all that computing power feel like to ride in? "When you're ready to go, just press the button in the middle of the screen," says the supervisor with a smile. With the button firmly pressed, the steering wheel sparks into life, centring itself before spinning 180 degrees to navigate around the first obstacle. As unusual as it might be sitting in back seat while a digital driver takes us for a spin, it's an undeniably smooth ride. With a few more laps around the customised circuit, the i3 takes an identical line each time with clinical precision. Well, after all, we're rather that than it doing doughnuts - we'll leave that to Nico Rosberg and our Gen2 car for now.
With the laps complete, the i3 parks itself back in the parking bay with pin-point precision. Sure, it's a very different experience to one taking place on the Formula E track just a few meters away but, for the majority of car manufacturers, handing over the steering wheel is likely to become the norm in the future. In less than three years, BMW will offer Level 3 autonomy - that means hands off, eyes off driving - as an option on the BMW iNext due to hit the streets in 2021. At the same time, the marque will roll out a test fleet of BMW iNext level 4 and 5 vehicles designed to take the technology to the next level.
With tech giants like Uber and Google, as well as BMW and other car manufacturers autonomous efforts already well-established with test cars roaming the streets around the clock, Formula E is also helping to develop the next generation of car technology by hosting track activities from Roborace - the world's first driverless electric racing car. With estimates suggesting that up to 94 per cent of road accidents are caused by human error, autonomy on our roads could be a lifesaving development.
Still intent on working on that driving licence or happy to leave it to the robots? We know what our drivers think.