From Malaysia to Munich: My First Week at BMW

Can't believe I'm here ! It's so rewarding to arrive at the BMW offices after jumping through all the bureaucratic hoops with the process of getting the work visa and everything else in between, with being an international student from Malaysia, making the experience regrettably unforgettable.

For my first week, it's been a wonderful blend of jet-lag, onboarding information overload, and culture-shock with the added benefit of witnessing amazing work and beautifully new environments around me. I'm hoping to gain a good insight into the state of how the best of the best is developing their logistics and robotics and contribute as much as possible to bringing their vision to reality!

From what I've gathered, the experience is going to be challenging as much as it is rewarding with the blend of NVIDIA Omniverse, Blender and VR there's been a good amount of problem solving involving a lot of patience with practical things like hardware and software malfunctions.

I expect and hope to grow immensely as a person and as a professional, being put into a very dynamic environment with tasks popping up left and right all while navigating a completely different culture.

I look forward to navigating this journey with the other interns while trying to find my own path forward as an industrial designer.

Michael Tong
BMW Group Design Intern, 2025