MILANO – The brand new face of an idea that has roots at the beginning of the third millennium testifies to how everything apparently changes while remaining the same. BMW amazed the world when it presented its iDrive twenty years ago, that system centered on a knob on the console that controlled everything on board, now comes with the latest evolution which is an even greater revolution. The system has progressed and, above all, the average motorist has become emancipated, inevitably becoming digital under the blows of a technology that no longer admits rearguard positions in every field.
Today, talking about the new iDrive is no longer a question of the wheel to be controlled without taking your eyes off the road, that in fact is still there even if it has become transparent material almost to make it clear that it is already part of yesterday’s world. Useful only to control what still can be done, because the rest of the car’s intelligence takes care of the rest with a calculation capacity increased by almost 20 times, 5G connectivity and a spectacular curved screen that reminds us that “guys, you’re at the cinema ! “.
The show, because it is a show, begins even before setting foot in the car: by exploiting the ultra-wide band, the on-board system in fact detects the presence of an approaching key or smartphone, thus starting some reception operations such as lighting. the passenger compartment and the handle.
On board then, those who drive can choose a perfectly tailored position thanks to the “MyModes” settings: there are 10 parameters to sew the preferred position on themselves, decide what type of driving they want (steering, set-up, gear) and electric car, given that the new generation iDrive will debut on the iX arriving later this year, also the noise it wants to hear inside the passenger compartment.
The wheel, then, but also the voice because the physical commands are now halved. The voice assistant takes care of the rest, who seems to know everything with his personalized suggestions that can suggest the most routine routes without having to enter the final destination every time.
Inside the car the special effects are wasted with the BMW Curved Display which represents the main novelty and groups the monitor dedicated to the instrumentation and the control panel: the perimeter of action of the two screens is dictated by diagonals of 12.3 “respectively. and 14.9 ”, even if visually everything merges into a single structure. The graphics, with a resolution of 200 dpi, testify to the evolution of the iDrive. It can be customized with the aim of attracting the driver’s attention and, at the same time, passing him the right amount of information required in various contexts, to avoid distracting him while driving with overabundant messages. Therefore it is possible to choose between three different layouts (called Drive, Focus and Gallery), preferable in different contexts, and between various types of gadgets that it is impossible to list all together because they are too many and all in their own way spectacular and protected from aging because the remote software update allows you to benefit from regular improvements over the air, to integrate additional functions and to always stay up to date. This at least until the subsequent implementation of the iDrive which, as has already happened several times in the last twenty years, will be even more spectacular and intelligent, as if there are no limits to the excessive power of the car over the driver. Let’s resign ourselves: the pilot inside us has long since retired. Command the car, and with so many distracted or clueless around it’s not even a bad thing.
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