Now it's a band of a dozen dials and buttons for climate control, seat heaters, and defrosters midway up the center stack, between the ashtray and the DVD slot. Some automakers nicely integrate the climate control information into the main display while using separate buttons (Infiniti does it best); BMW instead uses an adjacent display with black panel technology that appears blank unless there's the control is activated; it blends nicely into the dark wood paneling BMW still favors for the dash. You see only the lit orange digits, not the ghost of the unlit parts of the display. That's a little feature, but in the $80,000 price strata, it makes the buyer feel better about the purchase. Haptic, or force feedback, is gone from this iDrive.
In the earlier 7 Series, when you neared the end of a selection list, the dial became harder to turn. The haptic feedback, from Immersion Technologies, also made it possible to have discrete clicks for, say, the fan speeds (except the climate control fan isn't part of iDrive) or include little bumps felt by your fingers as you scrolled the radio tuner and crossed the frequency of an active station. BMW says owners found force feedback unexpected or limiting; it may also be some of the feedback was a bit crude, for instance when nearing the end of a list, you didn't feel the controller stiffen so much as pulse the control wheel in the opposite direction.
If you don't want to use iDrive, BMW has a good voice input system that works with virtually all entertainment, navigation, and climate control features controlled by a button on the steering wheel. But it's not conversational, meaning you can't say what's on your mind and expect it to parse the request. Rather, you must use known words. But most commands have multiple synonyms, so if you take an educated stab in the dark and say, "Tune FM 106 point 3," it's going to work. Transflective 10.2-Inch LCD Display (1280-by-480) The display for the iDrive operations is the industry biggest and best, a 10.2-inch transflective display with a 16:6 aspect ratio (most widescreens are 16:9 or 16:10) and a 1280-by-480 pixel resolution.
In other words, effectively two 640-by-480, 4:3 VGA displays side by side. The screen can be split roughly two-thirds (left), one-third (right) to show two pieces of information, such as the navigation map on the left and a trip computer on the right. In unfamiliar territory, a good combination is a close-up perspective view on the left and an overview map on the right. The previous 7 Series also had a split screen but BMW, in father-knows-best fashion, restricted what you could display on which side. If you wanted to see audio information and your navigation map, the navigation map could only be in the smaller right-hand window. Call me crazy, but how much screen real estate do you need for music information? BMW made cautious progress with this 7 Series. If you want fullest audio details (artist, album, track, playing time, and next three tracks or next three albums / artists on an iPod or MP3 CD), it still must be on the left, but if you can live with a truncated information set (artist, album, song), that can now be on the right. The display is a transflective LCD.
Your calculator is a reflective LCD, lit by whatever light bounces off the panel. Your laptop is a transmissive LCD, lit by light from fluorescent tubes or LEDs behind, and it washes out when you go outside. Yet that's what automakers use. A transflective LCD can be lit by either light source and the more reflective light hitting the screen, the brighter the display. As I found on the first car with a transflective LCD, the
BMW 3 Series convertible , a transflective display can be easily read with the top down on a sunny day when you're wearing 90% light-blocking sunglasses. This is a major advance and belongs on all cars - especially when the automakers ding you $1,500 to $2,000 for most navigation systems. (Components experts say a transflective display runs $25-$50 more than a transmissive LCD. When many automakers are lose billions a year, the cost of transflective would be a rounding error.)
In German automaker fashion, the display is not touchscreen, because surveys of motorists in Germany find Germans abhor displays marred by fingerprints. (Americans are happy to finger-tap a screen while eating a bucket of extra crispy and, anyway, isn't that what microfiber cloths are for - cleaning grease off glasses, laptop screens, and cockpit LCDs?) And in BMW fashion, the displays are mounted at the top of the center stack to be as close as possible to your line of sight, which is good. Because it's transflective, this display doesn't need a hood. And that's even better.
New Navigation Supplier, More Bells and Whistles For this version 7 Series, BMW moved to a new navigation hardware supplier, Bosch, and map data supplier, TeleAtlas. (It had been Siemens and Navteq.) BMW pioneered in-car navigation in 1994.
Its navigation systems this decade have been underrated because most users and reviewers expended their energy ranting about iDrive. (It didn't help that Americans seem to prefer the touch-screen metaphor favored by the Japanese.) The map data is stored on an 80GB hard drive and includes 3D terrain and building maps. In perspective view, you see terrain in the country and 3D landmarks in the city (photo at left): major buildings show façade details; other buildings show their footprints (an L-shaped building is L-shaped) and are extruded (raised) to show relative height. Major buildings are lifelike representations (the opera house but not your house) and other downtown or commercial buildings have the proper shape and are extruded (raised) to their relative heights.
Icons still run up the left side of the navigation screen and they're a bit cryptic but now there's pop-up help of sorts: When your turn the iDrive control knob, the name for each function appears, one at a time. It was pleasantly amusing to see one of the senior managers of the 7 Series project, a 30-year BMW veteran and an engineer by training, momentarily unable to find where in the iDrive menu structure his staff hid in plain sight the 2D/3D map switch. In fact, it would be a perfect use of the word schadenfreude. To be fair, he's a busy guy, but so are the 12,000-15,000 people who'll buy a 7 Series here in its first full year in the U.S. Google Send-To navigation from your PC; real-time traffic BMW continues its association with Google that lets you create destinations online and then send them to the car, so long as it has the BMW Assist feature comprising an integrated cellphone (and Mayday calling). And BMW will continue to provide real-time traffic information, provided by Clear Channel and its partner Inrix.
Traffic information in the U.S. is still evolving - you learn about major disruptions and see approximate roadway congestion, but all RTTI misses some delays and accidents. And when you're routed onto side roads, it's guesswork. RTTI today doesn't know about traffic flow other than on highways, so it's guessing the side road traffic flow by the posted speed limit there. It's an industry issue more than a BMW failing and any traffic information is better than none, but you'll still be disappointed a lot of the time. You can also see multi-day weather forecasts.
Always-available Internet. (In the back seat. In Germany. )BMW crows about being the first automaker with what it calls ConnectedDrive "unrestricted Internet access."
Something got lost in the translation however. "Unrestricted" means this: From your 7 Series, in Germany, when you're sitting in the back seat of a model with the one of the two optional rear entertainment packages and with BMW Assist, you can surf the Web using the iDrive controller to enter URLs and it can be any web site in the world (thus the unrestricted access). You can use the front seat display when the car is stopped or going less than 5 mph. That's one more reason for BMW to have adopted the Sharp Dual View display that lets driver and passenger see separate images on the same LCD panel.
There is no provision for an infrared keyboard and BMW people gave us a song and dance about the difficulty of certifying a keyboard that would meet BMW standards; it's less clear why the infrared modules in each of the back seat displays couldn't be made two-way and you bring onboard your own $20 IR keyboard. (The further explanation from BMW has to do with BMW wanting to be in control of the entire customer experience, yada, yada, so if the crappy keyboard you bought online fails when you spill your bottle of sweetened green tea, you'd of course blame BMW rather than yourself or Tazo.) It's possible BMW will negotiate a data agreement with a U.S. cellular carrier in time for the U.S. launch. (It's working on European coverage outside Germany, too.) It would also be nice if BMW added an optional router so your WiFi laptop could get Internet access, too. Chrysler does that already with its cellular data option.
BMW says its lineup of BMW Online services "remains absolutely unique and unparalleled in the world" including the basic Internet access plus portal services: business, sports, and general news; weather reports at the present location and destination; parking space information; and e-mail send/receive. BMW notes the services are "tailored ... to national conditions," meaning not every country gets the full package because, perhaps, BMW and the cellular carriers couldn't strike a pricing agreement, or the infrastructure isn't ready. It remains to be seen how much we get in the U.S. And others are chipping away at what BMW offers: Ford's
Sirius Travel Link, for instance, provides traffic information (for the navigation system), news, sports scores, weather reports, ski conditions, fuel prices, and movie listings.
It debuts on the 2009
Lincoln MKS sedan. ConnectedDrive, BMW's term for its online and telematics offerings, has the potential to make the car an important part of our connected lives, while simultaneously annoying BMW's purist fanatics who think things went downhill ever since the BMW 2002 went out of production in 1976.
How to fit 5 buses inside one carAt home, you've probably got one network, 1-1/2 if you count Ethernet and wireless Ethernet as variants. BMW has five. There's a CAN bus (controller area network) for much of the car's core functions, a slower LIN bus (local interconnect network), the MOST bus (Media Oriented Systems Transport) for infotainment, and the high-speed, the ByteFlight bus for safety features, and the 10-Mbps FlexRay bus for chassis control. Why so many? CAN forms the core of the current car communications while LIN provides for even cheaper connections of non-critical devices such as the window winders. MOST excels at connecting infotainment devices and allows (in theory but not always practice) for swapping out modules if a newer technology comes along. ByteFlight knows about critical safety components. FlexRay is so quick that even at high speeds that information about a bump hitting the front wheels can be relayed to the rear suspension in time for the shock absorbers to adjust. These buses connect about 100 microprocessors.
Multiple multimedia options, great Bluetooth BMW offers a cornucopia of entertainment choices although it's hard for any automaker to stand out here. From BMW you get: -- Standard USB jack that accepts virtually any music-bearing device, including iPods, iPhones, and USB keys. -- DVD drive that plays audio and video CDs, DVDS, and MP3 or WMA discs. -- 80-GB integrated hard drive that sets aside 12 GB for music. (Lots of automakers have hard drives now; BMW's is currently the biggest.) Music can be ripped from audio CDs or copied from already ripped MP3 / WMA music on a disc or key. The hard drive has a lookup engine for thousands of the most popular CDs and BMW says you can used ConnectedDrive (the cellular data connection) for lookup of more obscure titles. -- iDrive control of three music-capable cellphones (iPhone is one) that snap into docking modules in the cramped center console, as well as the ability to control music on Windows Smartphones if there's a connector module. -- Good and better back seat entertainment systems with dual 8 and 9.5 inch screens.
You can have up to three separate programs playing: front, left rear, right rear. The previous generation used a single LCD at the back of the center console; this has a panel on the back of each front seat headrest. -- Basic music information displayed for the driver at the base of the instrument panel regardless of what's showing on the center stack LCD display. -- In the U.S., Sirius satellite radio and HD Radio. It wasn't clear yet if that will be integrated or optional. -- In Europe, broadcast television in back and, when not moving, in front. (Europe is more densely populated than the U.S., so you're less often without a TV signal.) -- Two speaker/amplifier upgrade packages beyond the basic, quite capable audio system.
Bluetooth may be seen as an long-running standard, but in fact the automaker and phone manufacturer implementation varies greatly. BMW includes Bluetooth and BMW's version is pretty robust. It does a good job uploading entire phonebooks including multiple numbers per contact. Test drive: Amazing grace at speed Germans believe you build better cars when your car companies are located near the Alps and the country has an (increasingly crowded) network of unlimited speed autobahns. This new 7 Series is proof. I drove both the 400-hp twin-turbo V8 750Li that uses the same engine in the
BMW X6 and the 245-hp twin-turbo inline six-cylinder diesel 730d. There's also a twin-turbo 326-hp six-cylinder 740Li. All use six-speed automatic transmissions. The L stands for long (the car is stretched 5.5 inches), i is for fuel injection, and d is for diesel. (The first digit is the BMW model (1, 3, 5, 6, 7) and the second two digits stand for the engine displacement or, increasingly, relative performance. The 740Li has a 3.0-liter turbo engine that performs more or less like an unturbocharged 4.0-liter engine.) Nothing else that weighs 2-1/4 tons and measures 3 inches longer than a Cadillac Escalade comes anywhere near the performance of the fifth-generation 7 Series.
Most of all, the 7 Series performs well for the driver on narrow roads, on wet skidpads, on unlimited-speed autobahns. Under extreme braking, there's never any twitchiness suggesting the front and rear ends want to swap positions, something I've encountered in a couple American high-end sport sedans. The new iDrive controller helped me find information faster while driving and the optional head-up display (about $1,200) put the most important information at the bottom of my field of view through the windshield. For those without an HUD, the same key information goes into the instrument panel. The ride is almost as enjoyable for the front-seat passenger, especially when you use the power-ventilated seats and the butt massager -- technically, an active comfort seat that raises and lowers the left and right sides of the seat a fraction of an inch to keep your legs from falling asleep.
In many ways, the journey goes even better in back. Rear legroom on the standard 750i is fine and it's exceptional in the 750Li, which is 5 inches longer, which you'd expect in a car 205 inches long (almost 3 inches longer in this model). The rear seats recline and it's there you can watch a movie or surf the Web while under way, something you can't do in front. Both rear passengers share one controller via an A/B switch - do children of the privileged not squabble over such things? - but they can watch or listen to separate programming. With the Driving Dynamic Control switch on the console set to Comfort and with the standard air suspension of the long-wheelbase cars, the passengers got a limo-like ride while the driver still had an exceptional sense of control. This is where the FlexRay bus comes into play: When the front suspension feels a bump and passes word to the rear suspension 126 inches away and moving forward at 88 feet per second at 60 mph, it's a race against time. Fortunately, technology wins: The rear dampers (shocks) respond in 2.5 milliseconds, during which time the car travels 6.8 inches at the top speed of 155 mph, 2.6 inches at 60 mph. The gasoline-powered V8 (left) is cat-quick, about 6 seconds 0-60 mph, but the diesel is only a second slower.
On a sprint along the autobahn at speeds of 100 to 150 mph, fuel economy was still on the order of 20 mpg, and an afternoon of driving on town, rural, and autobahn roads netted nearly 30 mpg. BMW deserves credit for being among the first automakers to offer 50-state-legal low-emission diesel cars this fall with the 3 Series compact sedan and X5 SUV. But BMW would be sending an even stronger message if its biggest, least fuel efficient sedan (other than the M5) could be had with a diesel as well. While hybrids are efficiency kings in town, on rural roads and interstates, nothing can touch a diesel for efficiency. Especially now that engines such as the BMW diesel are unnoticeable inside the cockpit, and outside only for a moment when starting, or at idle if you listen carefully. That diesel smell? Just the faintest whiff from outside the car.
The 7 Series continues as a rear-wheel-drive car where Audi and Mercedes-Benz offer all-wheel-drive versions and that may cost BMW a few sales. Based on BMW's statement that economy improves 3% over the old model, thanks to a more efficient engine and extensive use of aluminum to cut 200 pounds of weight, expect to see an EPA rating of around 15 mpg city, 24 mpg highway, 19 mpg combined, using premium fuel. Bells and whistles: Showing off technology The hit list of technology also includes: -- Night vision. Order this option (about $2,200) created for BMW by Flir and AuotLiv and not only will you see, in the LCD display, the roadway and any warm object up to 300 meters (1,000 feet) away, but the system will place rectangles around hazards: people directly in your path (but not people off to the side), perhaps before you notice them in the display. The algorithms today detects pedestrians and joggers as well as bicyclists and skateboarders and eventually will pick up animals as well. -- Active steering front and rear. The rear wheels can steer up to 3 degrees in the direction opposite the front wheels at low speeds, making for crisper turns and a turning circle reduced by 28 inches. Above 30 mph, the rear wheels steer in the same direction as the front wheels, making for smoother lane changes. If you order the active steering option, you also get BMW's quicker front-wheel turning at low speeds. That is, a quarter turn of the steering wheel at 20 mph gives you turning effect than at 40 mph. It's different from variable-effort power steering where the turning effort is less at low speeds when you're parking.
Circle of safety adds blind spot detection, side-view camerasBMW is another automaker providing a circle of safety around the vehicle: cameras and sensors to monitor your progress front, rear, and side. Along with front and rear sonar, a backup camera, active cruise control, and lane departure warning, BMW is adding with the 7 Series: -- Side-view camera. Two fender-mounted cameras just ahead of the front wheels look ahead and sideways as you pull out of an alley or a parking spot (if you backed in).
You see the view as a split screen on the LCD display: another reason to have such a big LCD. It's useful on a car with such a long hood where the driver sits 8 feet back of the front bumper. -- Blind spot detection. BMW confusingly calls this lane change warning, which is easily confused with lane departure warning (which alerts if you drive out of lane). Sensors in the rear look to the side and back for cars coming up quickly to the left and right into your blind spot.
If it's unsafe to change lanes, a yellow warning triangle lights up in the outside mirror. If you don't see the warning and put your blinker on to change lanes, the steering wheel vibrates a don't-do-it warning. This is the same warning you get with the lane departure warning and in both cases it means the same thing: Stay in lane. BMW wisely uses no audible warning, which is embarrassing when there are others in the car who wonder what you've done wrong this time.
BMW Individual: How about a quartz iDrive controller?
In the rarified atmosphere of $100,000 cars, automakers look for little touches that make the car seem better in little ways. You can for instance, order your 7 Series with quartz material iDrive and dashboard tuning knobs that feel heftier and cooler to the touch than formed high-strength plastic knobs with a baked-on metallic surface. Beyond the usual build-to-order program, there's a BMW Individual program with additional (costlier) leathers and additional (costlier) paint treatments and a three-month lead time
I was especially interested with the offered Merino leather which, according to BMW, has a "natural open-pore structure [that] assures a lasting active breasting effect and offers supreme comfort." If you don't like the upgraded fabrics BMW offers, you can supply your own. There's a separate BMW Security car program that offers bullet-resistant body, windows, and tires. One level deters the garden variety kidnapper in Mexico City; a second level resists more concerted terrorist attacks on the diplomatic community.
Design and style: Did BMW retreat too far? BMW took a lot of flak for the 2002-2008 fourth-generation 7 Series, particularly the high trunk line that was called the Bangle Butt, named for BMW's American-born chief designer, Chris Bangle. Other automakers followed with raised trunklines that paid tribute to the BMW design, such as the Toyota Camry and Lexus LS. Over time the BMW design grew on some users (okay, me) but it was a flashpoint for others, particularly Europeans who had made their peace with iDrive 1.0. BMW's board of management couldn't take the heat (reportedly), toned down the design in 2006 with the mid-life refresh, and for this fifth generation model, BMW sounded a retreat that it's describing as a charge in a new direction. The new direction may prove risky in today's climate of high oil prices, since the car is designed to look wider and longer, which to some translates to bigger and less efficient. (Even if that's not the case.) What's there is striking and unquestionably BMW, but it's also less interesting.
BMW pulled out every trick in the books to make the car look straighter, longer, and wider, with front air scoops running the width of the car, rear chrome strips running the width of the car, and creases on the sides to emphasize the car's length. Regardless, the design is unmistakably BMW. There is no danger you'll see this as a Camry-Genesis-LS460 lookalike, at least until the other designers adopt BMW's new styling cues. Inside, the design is even more refined and luxurious than with the previous generation. That said, Audi remains the benchmark for cockpit sophistication. BMW still revels in prince-of-darkness dashboard design.
While you can order beige leather to lighten things up, three of the four dashboard and console woods are dark and three of the four are glossy finishes that bounce sunlight back in your eyes. Only BMW's Fineline natural (matte) trim looks like wood (still dark), while Fineline high-gloss, Ash Anthracite and Ash Grain high-gloss all have so many layers of glossy finish you can't tell if it's wood underneath or a very good plastic laminate. For wood trim done right, BMW should follow the lead of the new Jaguar XK or the aging but still vibrant Infiniti M35 / M45.
Is that a beer tap on your console? With this 7 Series, the shifter is back on the console, replacing the column-mount electronic shifter that performed well but didn't seem suited to a sporting car. This electronic shifter, shaped like a stainless steel beer tap, has two issues. First, it takes up console space that could be better suited to important things (for Americans) such as better cupholders, although there are two so-so cupholders just forward of the shifter. That forces iDrive to the right of the shifter, although the location still falls naturally to hand, especially since there's an armrest for support and no cupholders between the armrest and control knob. (A real-world drawback to Audi's MMI layout.) Second, the shifter actions take a bit of practice: To put the car in gear, you press a button on the left side of the shifter, then pull back for Drive, forward for Reverse. Once engaged, the shifter pops back to the middle position, since it's just a big electronic pushbutton.
Slap the shifter to the left and you can shift manually: Pull back to upshift, push forward to downshift. But to shift into Park, you'd don't push the shifter all the way forward. Instead, you press a smallish button on the top of the shifter. If you do the normal thing and push all the way forward, past Reverse (or so you think), you're still in Reverse and the car will be gathering speed as you open the door and step out (remember: 400 hp engine). Ask me how I know. My preference, although BMW didn't ask my opinion, is that BMW should go back to the steering column shifter or (better) use a dash-mounted stub as on the Toyota Prius or various forgotten American cars - and couple it with paddle shifters.
Since it's all-electronic, size doesn't matter.
Should you buy? When can you buy (or lease)? This fifth generation 7 Series was to have been introduced officially at the 2008 Paris Auto Show in early October with sales in Europe this fall. It will likely be "announced" to the U.S. market at the mid-November Los Angeles auto show with pricing announced at the Chicago Auto Show in February and delivery beginning in late winter. My best guess is that the base price will creep up a couple thousand dollars to around $85,000 vs. the $79,900 entry price for the outgoing 750Li, and the as-sold price will be on the order of $100,000. Even with so much standard, many of the options that are available are not cheap. You can spend $2,000 apiece for active cruise control, night vision, upgrade audio, and premium comfort seats.
More likely it will be the as-leased price ($1,000 to $1,500 a month) since the 7 Series has been the most-leased car in the U.S. About 85% of dealer transactions are leases. Should you buy? Get on the waiting list to buy? Nearly a dozen automakers can lay claim to building the world's best luxury car: Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Jaguar, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche. (Most all in the first half of the alphabet.) Audi, BMW, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz take it most seriously.
The mantle of world's best car typically accrues to whoever among the self-anointed most recently delivers to market a high-end vehicle. And that right now will be BMW. The fifth generation 7 Series takes away two compelling reasons not to buy the fourth generation: iDrive too complex for most Americans and a design too reaching for many tastes. Now, all you have to do is ask yourself if you want to be seen driving a car with a big V8 engine when the rest of the world can have an economical but powerful diesel. I'd rather have this big Bimmer than any other car on earth. As long as you don't need all-wheel-drive, the 7 Series surpasses the
Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the standard-bearer the last three years.
Next-generation iDrive, huge display The original iDrive was introduced on the previous 7 Series (2002-2008) and employed a rosette layout. To initiate an action, you slid the iDrive controller in one of eight directions (north, northeast, east, etc.), then turned and/or slid the dial more to adjust choices, then pressed down to initiate the command. It rewarded the dedicated owner, but not the more commonly found owner who wanted the car to do his bidding, not vice-versa, and it was even worse for the spouse or partner who needed to borrower his 7 Series when her non-iDrive car was in the shop. Here's what you get for 2009 with the new iDrive: The iDrive controller is now wrapped with a rubbery band for easy gripping, not the slippery metal of the first generation.
The button pairs are inclined in a slight V-arrangement to give you cue if it's the front button or the back button you're touching. Press the Menu button and instead of a compass rose of choices, you get a list of eight choices, just as you'd get on virtually every iDrive knockoff that has come since from the likes of Acura, Audi, Cadillac, Hyundai, Infiniti, and Mercedes-Benz. They are CD/Multimedia, Telephone, Navigation, Contacts (cellphone), BMW Services, Travel Info, and Setup. (The photos show the choices in German.) Twirl the dial, press the button, and you're under way. Climate control moved out of iDrive's clutchesClimate control has been completely removed from the purview of iDrive.