BMW to expand its connected-car plans

The vehicle is conceived by ex-Bugatti designer Daniel Simon who is also famous for designing vehicles from Tron Legacy and Oblivion

The future of intelligent driver-car connectivity is one of the key topics the BMW Group will be addressing at the MWC 2017 event in Barcelona. The company is also using the occasion to highlight the shape of things to come for autonomous parking.

As far as the BMW Connected service is concerned, the company aims to keep their customers on time, in touch and in control via multiple touch points such as smartphones, smartwatches and voice assistants. The features of the service, such as trip planning and remote control functions, are focused on the user and delivered in an intelligent, personalised form adapted to the user’s context. The foundation of the service is the Open Mobility Cloud, built on Microsoft Azure, which processes data from multiple sources and presents the user just the right information at the right time.

The devices that can be linked to the vehicle using BMW Connected currently include smartphones (iOS and Android), smart devices like the Apple Watch and Samsung Gear (S2 and S3) as well as the Amazon Echo. In the future, this will enable BMW Connected to alert the user when their BMW is due for service and offer a choice of appointments at their local dealer. User personalisation and convenience are set to be further enhanced by the arrival of a new service being tested for the first time in the UK from the middle of this year.