At the start of 2017, BMW used its recently launched 5 Series and BMW Connected Onboard – which made its debut in the new model – to showcase the potential unlocked by digital services in the area of customization. It represented a major step towards the goal of an overall digital customer profile, providing a personalized mobility experience that not only works in a customer’s own BMW, but also in other models from the brand. Building on this, the company is introducing a new era of highly personalized services in the form of BMW Connected+.
BMW Connected+ provides a digital bridge between smartphones and vehicles. It delivers the next level of in-car customization and smartphone content integration on the Control Display. This makes display and operation in the vehicle simpler than ever. At the same time, new services are being introduced that aid individual mobility planning and help users find their way in an ever-more complex world. For the BMW Group, customizing is the key to really staying in tune with the needs of customers and assisting smartphone usage, both inside and outside the vehicle.
The new system has a couple of very interesting features available, all thought out to help you better organize your time. The video below aims at explaining some of them in the best way possible, to offer a glimpse as to what BMW’s iDrive and Connected+ systems can offer as a whole package. Send my Routes to Car is a great way to use your smartphone to find your way to your next destination. It sends the coordinates to your car and, if you don’t have enough fuel to get there, the computer will calculate the best route that also has a gas station on the way.
Then there’s Share Live Trip Status, a way of sending your ETA to your contacts, with the simple touch of a button. The driver can send a link via SMS to the people selected via Share Live Trip Status at the start of the journey or if there are delays en route. Using this link will display the user’s current position on a map, along with the arrival time based on real-time traffic data. The big advantage here is that everyone is kept up to date automatically, allowing the driver to stay focused on arriving safely. There is even an option for those waiting to receive further SMS updates if there are any changes to the arrival time.
Another interesting function is Navigate Door-to-Door. Finding a parking place at the end of a journey does not always mean arriving at the final destination. Navigate Door-to-Door is a feature designed to guide users on the final leg of their journey (Last Mile) and back to their car when they are ready (First Mile). Once the car is parked, the driver will receive a message on the car’s display confirming that their smartphone is now ready to provide directions to continue on foot. At the same time, BMW Connected+ sends a push notification to the user’s smartphone to initiate navigation on foot. All these functions and more are explained in the video posted below.
