Autoblog European Editor Matt Davis demos the new iDrive version 4.2 telematics system in the 2013 BMW 750Li
Transcript[MUSIC PLAYING]
MATT DAVIS: Hey, everyone. This is Matt Davis with autoblog.com with another shortcut video. And today I'm out here in California at Laguna Seca raceway with the BMW midlife 7 series. And one of the great stories about this is the new version 4.2 of iDrive. And I am here with the person who has essentially been in charge of orchestrating this whole new version, Eric Sargent.
ERIC SARGENT: Morning.
MATT DAVIS: Walk us through it a little bit, what the key features are that users need to know about.
ERIC SARGENT: So what I can show you is the new simple Bluetooth pairing that we have with the navigation system. So what customers can do now is pair their phone without having to type in any type of pin code. I know most people tend to type in, a, four zeros to just type it in. So now we don't have to type in anything as far as a pin code.
What you do is get your phone on, want to add a new device. So now the vehicle's ready to accept the vehicle-- to a device. We go in, go into Bluetooth on our phone. We find the correct vehicle, we see it down there.
You start to let it pair. And now we see that they've recognized each other. The vehicle's automatically generated a random pin. I just check the pin on both the device and the vehicle, and I say, OK, and both. They're now connecting.
And then last step's going to be that it wants to know what features I'd like to enable. So I want this phone to be the primary phone and Bluetooth audio. And I say, OK. And then I'm ready to go.
MATT DAVIS: Nice. And now let's go into the navigation function that will show us all the exciting new 3D graphics-- or virtual 3D-- that you've been talking about.
ERIC SARGENT: So if you go into navigation, you see that the menu bar's still on the left hand side. And what we can do is, if we want to go into the interactive map, you go to interactive mode. Let's zoom back out. Let's go cross country. We can go back to New York City.
MATT DAVIS: Dun dun dun dun dun dun.
ERIC SARGENT: See if I can get in close this time. What we want to do is change it to perspective view.
MATT DAVIS: Mm.
ERIC SARGENT: This is now in the new pie menu in the interactive mode. And what we can do is take a little drive from Province down to New York. And back up a little bit.
And then we're going to get to New York and we're going to Zoom in. And we're going to start to see the 3D city models.
MATT DAVIS: There we go. This is the part I like. [LAUGHS]
ERIC SARGENT: You can also see that we have our branded fuel icons there as well.
MATT DAVIS: Yes.
ERIC SARGENT: And we're going to pick a specific fuel station. As we get closer to downtown here, we'll start to see all the buildings pop up. So you now have additional visual reference when you're driving around the city. These are common points of interest. And as you zoom in closer and closer, you start to see more and more buildings pop up giving you added visual reference as you're driving around the city.
MATT DAVIS: Extremely cool. Thanks a lot, Eric. This is Matt Davis with autoblog.com. Another shortcut.
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