Digitally, things are moving quickly at BMW these days. The automaker released an all-new version of its iDrive infotainment system (iDrive 5.0) for the 2016 model year, followed in rapid succession by a new BMW Connected app for interfacing between its car and smartphones, and then an even newer iDrive 6.0 this year on the latest 5-series. Hold on to your ones and zeros, people, because BMW has tossed out yet another digital advancement: BMW Connected+.
In essence, Connected+ is a suite of digital services that builds on the original cloud-connected BMW Connected app (which itself sprung from the multi-app ConnectedDrive ecosystem started a few years ago). The idea is to integrate more of those ConnectedDrive and Connected features into a single app while adding a few nifty new features that work with BMW’s impressive iDrive 6.0 system, which we recently tested on a 2018 440i coupe. BMW Connected previously offered remote vehicle locking and unlocking, HVAC preconditioning, alerts to leave for upcoming appointments, the ability to send navigation directions from your phone to your car, and push texts to contacts from your phone that you’re on your way.
Connected+ adds to that a smarter time-to-leave function that takes the vehicle’s location into account for true door-to-door travel times. Say you have a meeting scheduled for 2:00 p.m. across town, and your car is parked around the corner. Connected+ will prompt you to leave and offer walking directions to your car—it incorporates that walking time into your total trip time—and when you enter your vehicle, it will automatically pair with your phone over Bluetooth and begin the car portion of the trip navigation on the dashboard display.
A new on-screen Control Display menu then offers parking options at your destination, the ability to share live trip information with phone contacts (they’re sent a link to a web page that shows your route progress and ETA), or a simpler, less creepy function for sharing just your ETA with phone contacts. The benefit to those updates is that you needn’t call a nagging loved one or text them en route. The downside is that it steals your “traffic” excuses. Anyway, once you arrive at your destination, should you park a few blocks away, the Connected app will again push a prompt asking if you’d like walking directions to your final destination. Slick. Even slicker: Should your car not have enough fuel for a journey before leaving, the app will alert you to that and suggest fuel stops along your route.
Users are given two methods for pushing navigation instructions to the car: either over the car’s built-in 4G data connection or, if they’re inside the car, via Bluetooth, which is quicker. As before, Connected users can send directions from their favorite mapping app—if you’re in, say, Google Maps, you can pull up an iPhone’s share menu and select the Connected app option. New to Connected+ is a searchable My Destinations menu that links to your contacts and calendar as well as the internet, enabling users to search for addresses via contact names or appointments in addition to Google. Destinations can then be saved for later or scheduled like an appointment, separate from a user’s personal calendar.
We briefly sampled a pre-release iteration of Connected+ at BMW’s Chicago tech office (one of four globally where the app and user experience are developed) this week, using an Apple Watch, an iPhone, and a 2018 BMW 530e plug-in hybrid. Pushing navigation directions to the car was easy, and the in-car Control Display proved handy for checking on the weather and parking options at our destination. The first phone BMW provided us had issues connecting over Bluetooth, which we chalk that up to the non-final software both the phone and the car were running. Switching to a different phone and a new Bimmer solved the issue.
One pair of features we weren’t able to preview that are coming to Connected+ within the next few months are Microsoft Exchange and Skype for business integration. The former will enable drivers to have emails read aloud to them, to compose emails using voice control, and to accept or decline meeting requests verbally. The Skype function won’t include a video component but will be capable of pulling call-in information from meeting requests and setting up a voice line to a conference call via iDrive, without fiddling with your phone. BMW says the Skype function will even display conference-call attendees on the iDrive screen (provided they’re in your phone’s contact list), so there’s none of that “Who’s on this call again?” nonsense typical of most group phone meetings.
If the step from BMW Connected to Connected+ sounds incremental, it is—and that’s the point. Part of BMW’s demonstration was a tour of its Chicago tech office, where we learned that the automaker’s digital mavens aim to push an update or a new feature to the Connected platform every two weeks. That cadence is made possible by BMW’s adoption of Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform for all Connected services. Think of Microsoft as providing the phone-to-car-and-back-to-phone infrastructure while BMW sorts out the optics and functionality. Azure is easily scalable, which helps when there are now over 1 million Connected users globally who have initiated a claimed 1 billion processes either in the car or over the app. So if you’re a BMW owner who would like to see a feature in the Connected universe, say something—it could arrive quite quickly, as has been the case lately for BMW’s digital operations.
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