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.
How about a compromise?!
A set of physical switches/knobs with a screen labeling their function, chosen by the user via the big screen. Lets the user decide (ahead of time of course) which buttons/knobs are tactile as we all know that not one of use would set them up the same as any other Autopianian!
Yup, and the Bimmer folks already know how to do that. As mentioned before, my I3-rex (that writers on this site convinced me to buy), has a row of 8 buttons and any button can be programmed to do anything. If it is a thing in the manual, there’s a way to make it a feature. Brilliant, brilliant customizing. But current vehicles lack that ability. Pity.
Putting a picture of an original Neue-Klasse BMW, a car famed for being a tactile and engaging driver, on the center screen of that Miami nightclub interior shows a complete and utter lack of self-awareness. Pretty on-brand for BMW these days.
If I want to watch ads on a flat screen in a car, I’ll take a New York City cab.
But I think you’re on to something with that humiliation kink. The front of whatever that thing is in the top shot is downright embarrassing. And is that really what the steering wheel looks like in the third shot? Ugh!
Kind of a tangent but….Look how high your line of sight is! That sucks!
Everything that pushes your view of the road farther away reduces the sensation of speed (IE fun).
Car makers are lamenting the lack of enthusiasm in young drivers around buying cars, but they take away all that makes a car FUN in the first place and replace it with TV screens.
Make a car that lets you feel like you’re moving and a drivetrain that actually responds to your actions (like we had before transmissions had too many gears) and people will have fun.
I keep seeing all this anti-car sentiment from people nowadays, whereas it seems like people in general used to be interested in and generally enthusiastic towards cars, and the trend I can’t help but notice coinciding with this is cars becoming generally more boring and homogenous.
Like, I get the arguments against cars, but maybe if cars were still fun and catered to all sorts of niche markets like they used to, people wouldn’t be making those arguments as much?
Seems pretty simple, if you want people to be interested in cars, make cars worthy of being interested in.
I can’t really blame people for not getting interested in cars when all they’ve ever known are bland crossovers… they’re not really getting any taste of what can be enjoyable about cars.
Honestly, the biggest issue is more the UI/UX than the screens per se.
While I consider the all these screens are not a good thing, make a car user interface work in the same way a smartphone, tablet, TV or any other static appliance is quite dumb, because when driving, you need to pay attention to the road.
Cars have way more functionalities than they used have, things that require configuration, which are fine to be under a menu. The problem is when basic stuff is buried under 3 or 4 touches when it could be a click away.
Screens are appealing to automakers: they are becoming cheaper (well, until AI disrupt its supply as it did with memory) and it is way easier to implement a screen layout than physical buttons, so, screens will be here we liking them or not.
I saw a company once that were selling UI as a service, and their screens were quite good and closer to what I would expect. Once automakers realize (if they ever do) that cars needs to have a better UI design, not following what is done usually, probably there will be some progress, that will involve both software and hardware.
Just a matter of calling driver’s attention in the right way at the time. A chime when you have a problem in the car, is fine. Lacking haptic feedback when looking to change audio source after navigating the third or fourth level menu is not.
At The birth of the Autopian I was pushing for manual control as much as possible and using extending range as one of the reasons. But everybody loved the high tech like they love Chinese EV Junk now. No one remembers I stated this and was attacked as a luddite, not that I am not, all this over complicated junk reminds me of of apple vs every other computer or VHS VS Betamax KISS Keep it simple stupid.
Apple isn’t not a great example of things done right, because they would be the exact kind of company to load your car with optional locked behind a pay wall. AND your car would disable 10% of the horsepower with each new system generation update.
Those are terrible examples, both cost a lot more than the competitor to do the same thing. Apple is the BMW for sure, they make things one way that can’t be changed even if you don’t like it, but people still buy it because of the name.
Honestly no idea where you’re going with the VHS vs Betamax comparison. They both recorded TV, VHS could record longer and the machine was much cheaper. Game over. (The picture quality increase was a later version from Sony that was never released for home use, just in TV Studios)
Dude’s living in his own bubble, based on my anecdotal experience majority of people dont’ really like voice controls whether it’s on their phone or their car. For myself it really depends on if someone is riding with my, when I’m by myself I’ll use the CarPlay voice texts to respond to someone but am much more likely not to use it if I have someone else in the car.
Not surprised to hear this from BMW sadly, they have a history! A buddy of mine bought a used ’89 325i circa 2003 with the OE stereo. You could adjust either the EQ or fade/balance (maybe both don’t quite remember) by running your finger along a little track for each control that lit up little red dots to show where you’d move it too. As you might expect it was amusing and charmingly quirky at first but quickly felt like the annoying gimmick it was if you actually cared about adjusting these settings because it didn’t always register your finger input and took a lot of concentration to get to the right level…sound familiar?
I have had VOIP interactions for decades there is not a good software program that can handle all the different languages and accents fagetaboutit
Yeh I mean in theory “AI” might improve this but as long as it’s stuck in the cloud I’m skeptical (and that’s ignoring all the other issues with LLMs as implemented)
It makes it easier to subscription everything, don’t pay for the radio, they’ll just remove it from the screen, didn’t pay for heater, they’ll remove it from the screen.
That is absolutely marketing bullshit. They’ve invented a whole new target market, if only it existed.
I’ve known people who have passed on buying a car because everything lived in the touch screen. I don’t think you’d hear anyone say “the climate controls are real buttons and so are the seat heaters, this is absolutely unacceptable” about a car with some physical controls.
There’s a fine line between “People won’t know what they want until you show them” confidence and “I reject your reality and substitute my own” arrogance.
Then there’s BMW group, way over that line.
Germans whatcha gonna do.
Nazi bois gonna cum for you
14 over age on the line your death on the front page
It’s ironic that the cheapest Honda Civic now has a more driver-centric user interface than the most expensive BMW.
All of the BMW people who are supporting this can now have their keyboards at work replaced with a capacitive touch version that is off to the one side. Any glances away from their screen to see where the letters are, are punished by the cursor moving to a random place on the screen, so the flow of typing so broken while you then try to figure out where you are typing now.
See how much fun they have on spreadsheets now.
I hate the radio controls that require me to interface with a screen. The least BMW can do is bring the row of programmable radio/entertainment buttons back. And for god’s sake can we get dedicated buttons for the seat heaters and coolers? The basic hvac controls generally work ok on the screen, and can stay there. Finally, let me run my apple carplay navigation at the same time as the car’s navigation and let me flip back and forth as I desire – the BMW native nav drops when it sees another nav app – sometimes I may have two different destinations or just want two different opinions on the way to go.
I got to drive an M4 Competition on track for about 45 minutes, and the first 15 minutes was spent trying to figure out how to turn off the seat heaters as it was now an 80* day, then 10 more minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the cooled seats as I was soaked in sweat by that point before I gave up.
I’m disappointed to see 4 window switches on the driver’s armrest. I would expect BMW to do better, and just have a single window switch on the center console/armrest, that controls all 4 windows, and is reachable by all 4/5 passengers. And no other window switches in the car. Just 1 for everyone.
Please explain 1 button control 4 windows that each occupant may want at a different level?
Don’t worry, we’ll use AI to determine the optimal window height. Don’t mind that camera staring directly at your face, it’s just used to determine how much fresh air you need we swear 😛
Something along the lines of push down once to activate front left, down twice to activate front right, up once/twice for the rear windows, then pause, and control the window could be implemented. If the sequence isn’t done precisely, then the windows do something completely different than intended. Since maximizing user frustration is the goal, that ought to do the trick.
On one hand: BMW is selling more of these disposable tech monstrosities than their competitors, so I understand the logic.
On the other: how about NO you crazy German bastard!
I hate touchscreen controls like many here.
But I absolutely fucking DETEST voice control. Product planners that intend for me to use that shit can get bent.
BMW can fuck right off w/ that garbage.
But they have a massive problem – same one which Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Jaguar have:
Without the inline-6 and amazing handling* (*which was lost a couple generations of cars back), what is BMW other than a blue and white badge on what is now a range of ugly, bucktoothed vehicles?
Without smooth and powerful 6s and V8s, stand-up grilles, and bank-vault build quality inside and out – what is Mercedes-Benz other than a bunch of star logos?
Without turbo 5 cylinder engines, Bauhaus styling, and everybody and his brother selling AWD – what does Audi have other than some rings and a Hitler-moustache grille?
And without their powerful inline 6, elegant styling, an impeccable ride, and interiors slathered in wood paneling, Connolly hides, and dozens of chrome switches & chrome-ringed dials – is it even a Jaguar?
Jaguar has a more acute problem of not producing any cars for sale right now. And the fact that no one seems to care about this writ large.
How their heritage defines the brand seems somewhat a secondary problem at this juncture.
It’s definitely a German thing to do, touch/gesture/voice controls are very much “technologically more advanced” than physical controls and are therefore ze solution forvard with the latest techno-ology rather than ze backvards thinkings of ze past
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.
We’ll find out when the fifty-something realtor ladies that comprise their customer base get fed up with the controls and can’t tell their friends how superior this technology is with a straight face.
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
The German’s aren’t so proud to say that you couldn’t be right, and they will listen to you. It’s just that you’re wrong. As opposed to the opposite.
Tell that to BMW designers I guess.
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.