BMW’s new app keeps drivers smartly connected
The connected car just got a little bit smarter.
Drivers of late-model BMWs can now get smartphone and Apple Watch alerts to leave early because of traffic or walking directions to a destination after they’ve parked their cars, thanks to a new app powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud.
BMW and Microsoft announced the new BMW Connected service Thursday at Build, Microsoft’s annual developers conference. The iOS app is available now and will work with 2014 or newer BMWs. In time, the app should be able to sync with BMWs back to 2011.
“This is all about safety and convenience through an app that learns all about who you are and what you do,” says Randy Cavaiani, director of partner and product marketing for BMW. “The cloud is critical to something like this, where in order to scale the service, you need tremendous computing capacity to deal with adding users and their data as well as growing partner services.”
Once derided for not even being able to add a decent stereo system to a car, automakers have gotten the technology memo big time in recent years spurred in part by Silicon Valley companies.
For example, Google’s leadership on the autonomous car front has inspired auto giants from Ford to the Volkswagen Group to add a growing list of driver-assist features to traditional passenger vehicles. And Apple’s desire to own the car’s infotainment system (and possibly more, if Apple’s car project rumors are to be believed) has spurred automakers to offer in-car tech that allows them to brand such features themselves as opposed to ceding them to Apple’s Car Play or Google’s Android Auto.
BMW Connected is an example of just that: The storied Bavarian company is looking to provide customers with a suite of services that ideally will cement a driver’s relationship with the product.
In a demo at Build, Cavaiani showed how upon entering the luxurious BMW 750iL, the indash screen first greets the driver by name. Because a destination has been pulled in from a calendar invitation ahead of time, the car instantly fires up the navigation system without any actions from the driver. Another feature is the ability to draw from a series of pre-written text messages that a driver can send with the touch of a button that tells address book contacts your arrival time.
The app also will alert you if traffic conditions require an earlier departure time.
Cross-app functionality was demonstrated by opening the Yelp app on a smartphone enabled with the BMW Connected app, choosing a restaurant, touching “Directions” and suddenly that request is handed over to the BMW app, which then connects with the car’s computer.
“The idea is simply to use the power of our cloud service to create a branded experience for the customer,” said Sanjay Ravi, who focuses on automotive, aerospace and industrial alliances at Microsoft. “Every consumer today wants a personalized experience. To do that, you need to weave in the intelligent cloud and its ability to provide real-time machine learning and data analytics on a huge scale.”
Drivers can now get phone and Apple Watch alerts to leave early because of traffic or walking directions after they’ve parked their cars.