CES 2025: BMW Panoramic iDrive – Back to Reduction
In Las Vegas, ideally, everything always has to be a little "magic." That's why they brought in actor Tim Meadows, once part of the "Saturday Night Live" crew, for the press conference. And on an oversized screen, they presented the new display concept "BMW Panoramic iDrive" with design chief van Hoydonk. This debuts in the "new class."
They also brought an M5 Touring to Vegas, which was packed to the brim with the latest infotainment standard and represented a gaming haven within the gaming haven. That's why access in the following days was by invitation only – which we fortunately had through Qualcomm. To avoid having to completely rebuild its exhibits after the show, BMW did not make them accessible to everyone at the stand. However, we had the opportunity to take a seat in the green M5 Touring and to take a look at the new Panoramic iDrive.
For those who find the M5 too bland, you can dive into gaming worlds
In the M5, BMW's new beautiful gaming and infotainment world awaited, calculated by Qualcomm chips. Especially helpful in the rear for long journeys – and if you're on the road in an electric car, the whole family can pass the time with finely resolved games. Nevertheless, the "Curved Screen" on the dash remains complex, but it should become a thing of the past with the 5 Series facelift.
Because with the new class, Panoramic iDrive is moving into the white-blue models – initially in the i3 and iX3, then it will be available in the facelifted 5 Series and 7 Series models, as well as all new forthcoming models.
Content islands under the windshield
The main difference is the streamlining of the displays, which are now located in a narrow strip under the windshield and are easily readable there without being annoying. And here we can decide for ourselves what we want to see in addition to the legally required displays, BMW calls this "content islands." Additionally, a large head-up display primarily provides information about navigation and speed.
And how do you operate it? Ideally by voice or via the new, slightly angular steering wheel here too, which offers sensor surfaces with a tactile structure, so you ideally never have to take your eyes off the road. Which generally works quite well, but is still more complex than the truly blind-operable buttons or rotary switches of the old BMW models were. We would say that BMW is at least getting closer to the i-Drive rotary push controller again.
Good speech recognition helps enormously
Additionally, there is a small central display on the center console, which unfortunately tends to be as fiddly to use as with all others too. But since BMWs are very speech-recognizing, you can actually dictate most things, which works very well. Although we also consider here: By the time you've said "increase the temperature to 22 degrees," in the 1990s, you'd have already turned the dial... and it also got warmer immediately...
Qualcomm is naturally pleased with the new "Operating System X," which operates with an Android Open Source software stack. This makes it easier, as we are told, to integrate and download third-party apps: The games in the M5 are a good example of this.
And of course, the new classes can be updated more easily in this way, ideally “constantly” and always over the air – you just need to confirm it now and then, or if it's essential, the new class could simply carry it out in the background. BMW hopes to keep the new models' software up to date for much longer in the future.
As long as the chip and software manufacturers don't come up with completely new ideas again in the coming years…
What does this mean?
The new BMW Panoramic iDrive is definitely an improvement over the current Curved Screen. And it offers better readability and usability. In the hope that it will remain updateable in the long term.
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