BMW revealed its new infotainment setup — both hardware and software — at this year’s CES event.
While the Vision Neue Klasse gave us a glimpse into what BMWs of the future would look like, we’re getting more details on how the automaker’s new infotainment system is going to come together in its next-gen vehicles. We’re looking at BMW Panoramic iDrive, which takes things to the next level, as the name suggests, by adding a new wide-spanning display just like 2023’s concept car. Particularly with electric cars, the industry at-large is moving toward these short-and-wide displays (in this case, BMW Panoramic Vision) as a way to convey a host of content to both the driver and passenger in their field of vision, while minimizing all the stuff directly in front of the driver through eliminating the traditional gauge cluster and most of your typical buttons.
Instead, most everything you’ll actually use in BMW’s future cars will be context-based. You get a large central touchscreen, of course, and that will be how you get to some of your high level controls as well as finer details you can adjust when you aren’t actually driving. Beyond that, though, BMW brings in a new, four-spoke multifunction steering wheel with a slate of haptic controls.
On the left side of the wheel, you get your driver assistance systems like usual, while you get buttons to control the content in the panoramic screen and the optional 3D head-up display on the opposite side of the wheel as well.
BMW is rolling out its Android Open Source Project (AOSP)-based Operating System X software with this new setup, bringing over some of Operating System 9’s useful features like third-party apps. And while I’ve restrained from using those two letters virtually every company is pitching to its customers and shareholders at the future, don’t worry — you know BMW is all about that AI. They may not be quite as hardcore as Nvidia is about it, but who is?
The company plans to roll out this system, naturally, with its Neue Klasse models later this year. It’s likely we’ll see it in action on the next-generation BMW 3 Series, though we didn’t get confirmation of exactly which car is going to get it first. Regardless, it will expand outward from that first launch to cover the rest of BMW’s lineup, regardless of whether we’re talking about electric or internal combustion cars.
