Test of BMW’s Connected Drive Shows Road Bumpy

MUNICH – Automotive infotainment is the new Gold Rush; everybody is talking about it, but it remains very much in the pioneering stage.

The latest volley comes from BMW, which beginning next month will fit certain models with a dedicated SIM card as standard equipment, ensuring a wide range of BMW-exclusive features through high speed LTE cellular technology.

The new BMW ConnectedDrive services will be introduced with the revamped 5-Series and will be featured on all upcoming BMW i electrified vehicles.

On paper everything appears fine and fun, but reality is slightly different.

A test of BMW’s “Concierge Service” in the new 5-Series, for example, proves performance to be spotty and at times disappointing. A simple question about the day’s available Lufthansa flights from Munich to Rome appears to stump the operator at the other end of the communication line for some time, and the information that comes eventually is neither correct nor exhaustive.

Better results could have been had via a smartphone in a fraction of the time and would have included flight arrival times, information the Concierge Service could not provide in the 10 minutes it took to respond. Requesting fare information seemed out of the question.

On the other hand, the emergency-call service (automatic in the event of an accident) is lightning fast, after the system takes a few seconds to collect the essential GPS data for my location. The hotline call is returned shortly too, but it takes some time for the vehicle service center to answer the call, with a recording repeating that we would soon be connected with an engineer.

Internet radio is easy and fast to select, however. It takes just seconds to tune to a station in faraway South Africa.

Another nice feature is the Online Entertainment subscription, which allows any piece of music from Internet service rara.com to be downloaded to the vehicle’s hard drive. A single track or entire album can be selected via BMW’s iDrive controller, and there is no additional fee for the download. Service from Napster and other providers could be added in the future, BMW says.

Because each car owner will have a personal account with the BMW ConnectedDrive Store, all services can be accessed and used from a home PC and smartphone, as well.

Many other features have been announced, though not all are available yet or as fine-tuned as needed. And because of the complexity and legislative, legal and commercial hurdles, the Connected Drive service will vary by region, country and market.