BMW’s vision for the future at CES 2016

Maintaining the biggest theme in automotive technology at CES 2016, BMW are outlining their dreams for the Internet of Things by introducing Open Mobility Cloud along with confirmation of some great gadgets and gizmos which will end up in almost every BMW.

With Open Mobility Cloud BMW hope to seamlessly connect your new BMW car with your lifestyle. For example, by connecting to as many sources of data as possible BMW hope to be able to plan your journey based on real time navigation, traffic congestion, weather, coffee drinking habits and the need to replace the out of date milk which your Smart fridge has declared to have turned to custard.

Later, Open Mobility Cloud will interconnect seamlessly with automated driving programs. BMW has an interesting take on automated driving. They maintain that the create the ‘ultimate driving machine’ and hope to restrict autonomous driving to just the boring bits, such as parking or the daily commute, leaving actual driving for when you want to have fun.

Speaking of autonomous parking, BMW has used CES 2016 to announce that the valet parking feature of the new 7 Series will quickly trickle down to other models. This feature was demonstrated at CES 2016 on an i3 where visitors were shown an i3 autonomously parking in a regular garage space before moving across a wireless induction charging plate. This display showed that it is not only cars that will change with technology but also the size of the regular garage. With the car parking autonomously garages can be much smaller leaving more space for living.

Finally, with perhaps the best invention I have seen at CES 2016, BMW introduced us to the BMW Connected Mirror. Designed with a touch of 7 Series this mirror is like a Head Up Display for your life. Information is projected onto the mirror such as the status of your car, appointments for the day and expected traffic and parking conditions. When you get home pop your key on the mirror and up will come any missed calls, missed visitors to the house (such as the postie) and the ETA of your partner if they are on their way home.

BMW were very coy about the timeline to production for these new technologies. Some are already with us in the flagship 7 series while others are still some time away. No word at all on if all of these technologies are coming to Australia.

EFTM’s coverage of CES 2016 is made possible with support from Intel, Hisense, Sony, Samsung, LG and Alcatel One Touch