BMW NEW WORLD -- Head of Brand Relations and Cooperations for BMW Achim Muellers (aka Munich Express in Second Life), hosted a gathering of about 25 people on BMW New World Tuesday. The event, arranged by SL Business Communicators, highlighted the German automobile manufacturer's new initiative in Second Life and the value of consumer generated content in SL.
Contrary to other RL companies, the BMW Second Life initiative began quietly in early December. "We had the impression that at times the expected PR hype was more important than the involvement as such and that's definitely not what we want to communicate," Muellers said. "What we would love to see are improvements in the technology provided - to enable everybody to create better things."

Mueller revealed BMW had been watching SL's growth and development for quite some time and finally recognized its potential. The decision to create a digital in-world presence came after the company began to regard SL as "consumer generated content at its best." BMW is now convinced this new medium is the future, and Mueller believes companies must come to terms with that to keep up.

Visitors to BMW New World notice at once that the sim is focused on promoting the company's clean energy initiative. Material at the sim offers information about switching to alternative fuels. Mueller mentioned BMW's huge investment in its hydrogen concept and its belief that hydrogen is the future of mobility.

The Web site bmwworld.com states that the company is the first car manufacturer in the world to focus consistently on the medium- and long-term development of its cars on the use of hydrogen with a long-term objective to avoid emissions and use energy recovered in a regenerating process.

Mueller admitted, however, that the widespread use of such technology still lies down the road and can only work if there's cooperation between representatives of the car industry, energy providers and politicians.
"We decided to start now, because the development process takes time, for one, and we felt the need to start an initiative to get things going," Mueller says.

A guest at the meeting asked BMW's stance on the issue of intellectual property, while at the same time surprising Mueller with a virtual BMW motorcycle (a freely distributed item) not manufactured by the company. Mueller promised to test drive it after the meeting and didn't comment on the matter further.

Mueller says BMW New World will hold another meeting with other BMW experts and perhaps with the participation of the company's clean energy experts for a more in depth technical discussion.

The event ended with a quick tour by Mueller in which the participants got the chance to see BMW's H2R, one of the first of a new breed of race cars specially adapted to run on liquid hydrogen fuel. According to Mueller, this model holds a world speed record for hydrogen powered cars and was clocked at over 300 kilometers per hour in previous tests.