'Ride hailing is nothing more than manual autonomous driving,' Tony Douglas, Head of Strategy for BMW's mobility services said. 'Once you dispense with the driver you have a license to print money.'
The company is set to announce an alliance to develop self-driving vehicles with collision detection specialist Mobileye and computer chip maker Intel.
While Tesla's Model 3 will hit showrooms in 2017, and as rivals Porsche and Audi are working on all-electric cars for release by 2019, the German carmaker appears to have put such cars on the back burner.
BMW's move is the latest in a flurry of investments by automakers in technology industry startups that appear to be aimed at convincing consumers to do without owning their own cars, or driving vehicles as often.