The 2016 BMW 7 Series uber-premium sedan takes technology beyond the cutting edge. The cockpit is cocooned with weight-saving, life-saving carbon-fiber. There are more than a dozen ways to help the driver if he or she wants help. iDrive gets a touchscreen LCD and the ability recognize finger gestures, if not the rude gestures made by BMW 2002 partisans crying over progress. It ships this fall.
As with the the first iDrive BMW in 2001, there is so much new technology to present, so much Kool-Aid to drink, that BMW splits the announcement into a global unveiling of the car and its specifications this week, hands-on test drives later in the summer, another announcement at the Frankfurt Auto Show in September, and delivery in the fall. Here’s a tour of the new 7 Series as BMW unveiled it at BMW Welt, the customer center and showplace near its headquarters.
Active Driving Assistant is the basic-but-optional level of BMW automation. These features combine a forward-facing camera and side/rear-facing sensors.The alerts, unlike on most Asian cars, politely vibrate the steering wheel rather than wake up the whole cabin with warning beeps. They include:
Lane departure warning
Blind spot detection
Rear cross-traffic alert
Pedestrian detection/warning with light city braking (apparently meaning the car will brake and should stop in time, but not enough to make an ironclad claim that nobody gets hurt)
Speed limit info (the camera reads traffic signs)
Additional features include the almost-self-driving abilities:
Active cruise control with stop & go function
Front crossing traffic warning
Traffic jam assistant (paces the car in front at up to 37 mph (60 kph) and also maintains the correct lane)
Active lane keeping assistant (LDW warns when you drive, LKA keeps you in lane automatically)
Side collision protection (warnings during lane change, OK signal when it’s safe)
Speed limit obedience (our term, not BMW’s). If you’re doing 70 with adaptive cruise and the car sees a 55 mph sign, you’re given the option to press a button and comply with the new limit. It’s not clear if you can cut a deal with the car to set the limit to five over the posted sign.
Ford, BMW, and others have advanced the parking process from sonar pings to warn you of hazards, to assisted parallel parking (the moving car finds a spot, you stop and put the car in reverse, then it steers and you control throttle and brakes) to head-in parking to, now, head-in parking into a small garage with no driver on board. With the car pointing at the garage space you want to park in, you hop out of the car, taking the key fob with you. Press a button on the fob and the car eases itself into the space, splitting the available left-right distance and snugging in as far as possible.
An executive package lets the rear seatback recline to just under 45 degrees. The rear seat used to have a second iDrive controller which met with mixed acceptance (iDrive is not easy for a casual user) — it’s now a 7-inch tablet integrated in the center armrest.
