8:11 am, August 1, 2008
BMW ConnectedDrive is an add-on service for the company’s high-end navigation system.
It has just been improved, thanks to a link-up with Google.
ConnectedDrive is sat nav, with many of the features we take for granted and promote to customers – such as an emergency call button, emergency services being able to locate the car if the driver crashes and is knocked unconscious, and so on.
But there’s a lot more besides. Including the ability to access a special website at home, plot a route – then send it to the car, to be ready for the next day. This remote access facility is unique to ConnectedDrive, and is something BMW’s increasingly exploiting.
The next 7-Series, for example, will be the world’s first production car offering internet access. The office can send directions to a moving car en route. And, so long as the car’s stopped, the driver really can check their Facebook page from their car.
But even today, cars fitted with it have ever-new benefits. The latest gives them the ability to use ‘Google Send’, to locate non-business addresses. This feature, which the driver can do from home or office desk, allows personal addresses and three quarters of a million businesses to be quickly located, and routes to them plotted.
BMW is, again, currently the only car maker to offer this: but it’s sat nav-ability that will be coming to all cars before too long. Just the thing to help battle the portable units…
