Does BMW have some kind of humiliation kink? I have to ask because they sure seem to be on a roll lately when it comes to making choices that lots and lots of people absolutely detest. Most recently there was the thing where they were playing video ads on the center screens of BMWs, and before that, BMW was trying to get people to pay for subscriptions for heated seats. As you may recall, nobody was having any of that mess.
In general, there has been a lot of pushback to the needless overuse of technology for car controls, to the point where some markets, like Europe and China, are mandating certain car controls be actual, physical controls like buttons or knobs. Other carmakers, including fellow Germans like Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, have voluntarily begun to return to physical controls instead of all-touchscreen madness, because of complaints from drivers, studies, and people just generally getting sick of stupid technology-for-the-sake-of-technology bullfeces.
BMW, though, seems to be ignoring all of this.
I say this because in an interview with Australia-based outlet CarExpert, BMW Group Australia CEO Vikram Pawah stated, boldly that:
“We can see that voice and touch are becoming more and more common. Maybe it’s a generational thing as well. You would see that a lot of the younger generation, maybe 45 or below, they’re tapped into these technologies at a faster pace, using voice, using touch.”
Wait, what? Has this guy been paying attention to what’s been going on? I feel like this is what everyone was saying a few years ago, before all these things actually came to be, and so many people realized just how much they hated all-touchscreen/voice kind of control systems.
Pawah continues to talk about these hypothetical 45-year-old and younger masochists who love controlling their vents with touchscreen controls or whatever, like lunatics:
“They want things done quickly and they’re multitasking. And we have to keep that in mind. That’s how customers are evolving. They are multitasking.”
What does this even mean, “they are multitasking“? They’re driving, aren’t they? This all feels like marketing bullshit talk. Exactly how are touchscreen controls – which have been shown in studies to take focus away from driving, be more distracting, and be overall less safe than old-school physical controls – helping anyone multitask, unless those multiple tasks are 1.) driving and 2.) running into a guardrail. Oh, and maybe 3.) eating a sandwich.
Pawah also mentioned voice controls as being important, and noting that BMW has a more intelligent voice assistant, implemented on cars like the BMW iX3, that can handle requests like “Can you move the air away from my face?” and “I want to have a coffee that I had last week” though I still think normal mechanical vent controls are far faster and easier to use to move air away from faces, and for the coffee thing, I guess that could be useful? Sort of? As an alternative to, I don’t know, growing the fuck up and knowing where you like to get your damn coffee?
There were also a couple of other interesting quotes from Pawah:
“A car is not a standalone piece, it’s part of what’s happening around you in society.”
and
“I think you need to understand why that change is happening, and once you understand that it’s easier to comprehend what will happen in the future as well.”
These statements coming at this point in time are genuinely baffling to me; has this gentleman been in a coma for the past year or so? People have been using touchscreen and voice interfaces, and an extremely non-trivial number of people have been making so much noise about how miserable they find the experience that carmakers are now actually changing their plans, acknowledging that this all seems like it was a misstep.
Both of these statements make a big deal out of understanding a car and a car’s human-machine interface in terms of how it fits into society at large, yet somehow ignore what actually is happening with a car’s human-machine interface in terms of how it fits into society at large.
Now, I have heard that voice commands are more popular in China, so perhaps that market is being eyed more? But even so, China is still mandating more physical controls and fewer touchscreen controls, so there’s still blindness to that.
I reached out to BMW to get more clarification on what is going on here; Pawah is not CEO of all of BMW, so maybe different regions have different takes on these questions. I really don’t know for sure, but if I hear anything back, I’ll update the story.
It really does seem like lately BMW is determined to go against the grain of public opinion, with the in-car ads and the extra hard commitment to user interfaces that everyone else seems to be distancing themselves from, and I really can’t understand why this is the case.
What are they trying to prove, exactly? Is this just some attempt to appear tech-forward, and being so committed to the bit that BMW is putting their fingers in their corporate ears and la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-ing over all of the opinions and studies and reactions of the driving public?
Maybe. This feels like it’s going to bite them on the ass, though.
Driver: “activate right turn signal indicator”
BMW: “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that”
Driver: “why not?”
BMW: “my model was never trained on that”
Driver: “fine just sing Daisy Do.”
I agree with the overall sentiment, but I’m skeptical about BMW getting teeth-marks in their backsides about this. If they can still sell profitable quantities of vehicles when they deliberately make them look like SciFi rejects, I’m not sure what the tolerance limit really is.
Earlier this year I rented a new 2 (fewer than 5K miles) for the better part of a month. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the only physical controls were the steering wheel and pedals. I’ve had at least one BMW in the garage at all times since 1989; three for the last 15 years (OK, two of them I bought new or CPO and never sold). In terms of functional controls it was like a step back in time to my ’72 Pinto college crapmobile with a broken heater right down to the weird handling, albeit with nicer vinyl upholstery and no wet dog smell. As a result I am now exceptionally unlikely to darken a BMW dealer’s door for anything built within the last couple of years or newer.
At least the Pinto had a gazillion miles, cheap tires, and minimal maintenance to account for the handling.
I recall a Volkswagen official some years ago that pushed back on American’s desire for cup holders. The story went something like “people need to pay attention to driving.”
That’s why cup holders are important. You don’t always have someone else in the car to say “here, hold my beer, watch this” to.
This has Principal Skinner vibes. It’s the children who are wrong.
My experience working with my German colleagues, it’s often made abundantly clear that everyone else (read: non-German) is wrong.
As someone who works in the American division of a German company, can confirm.
I sometimes remind my German colleagues that I am an American employee and here we are able speak our mind, and that if they didn’t want my informed opinion about something, they shouldn’t have hired me.
Funny, after 20+ years of work experience with both Germans and Americans, it’s more often the latter group assuming they are the only ones being right and everyone else is not
A company with a userbase known for never touching their blinkers is now making it harder for them to use anything else in the car? I mean I understand them removing the blinker stalk, but what about wipers, or the headlights? /s
Tesla is overtaking them on the road in more reasons than pure sales.