The new BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant, a key feature on the all-new BMW 3 Series puts the 'intelligent' and 'personal' back in your car.
Activated by simply speaking a phrase like "Hey, BMW", the Intelligent Personal Assistant responds to natural speech patterns, which means no more stilted voice commands, you can speak to it as you would your phone's built-in assistant, or any smart home-enabled device.
Jolly good.
But what you probably didn't know is the BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant can make your driving life (and by extension, your life) infinitely better.
The Homecoming
Have you had a long, hard day at work? We know you have. We’ve all been there.
What if we told you that you’ll no longer have to carry your car keys around, and simply by encoding your Samsung smartphone with BMW’s Digital Key, you can unlock your car and start it? All the while your actual key is kilometres away, sitting in a drawer at home.
And what if we told you that you could tell the sat-nav to get you home simply by telling it to take you home?
Granted, autonomous driving isn’t quite here yet, but with the new BMW 3 Series, you can have a sneak preview of that. Active lane-keeping measures gently guide you back into your lane, adaptive cruise control with stop-and-go functionality means minimal modulation of the throttle/brake, and the Parking Assistant smoothly and accurately guides you into your parking lot at home.
Cranking up the bass
Good music can make any dull trip more interesting.
This much is obvious.
What the Intelligent Personal Assistant can do is it can be your personal in-car DJ. “Play the radio” is just the beginning, and if you don’t like the current channel, you can ask it to switch to another one, all without having to fiddle with knobs that will distract you from driving.
If you’ve loaded some tracks on the car’s internal music storage, you can ask the Intelligent Personal Assistant to play a specific track or genre. Hey, it does after all say ‘intelligent’ on the tin, right?
You can also ask it to turn up the bass, another essential element for getting everyone in the car to turn their frowns upside down.
Driven to succeed
Before heading off on a quick blast in your car, it’s always a good idea to check its engine oil level and tyre pressure.
Trust us when we say there’s nothing worse, or more dangerous than a car that’s running low on oil (the engine could quite literally grind itself to dust) or if its tyres are running flat.
Say goodbye forever to scrolling through endless menus to locate those diagnostic functions, or horror of horrors, having to pop the bonnet and/or break out the tyre pressure gauge.
One of the perks of the Intelligent Personal Assistant is that you’ll not only be able to do all that in air-conditioned comfort, but by just asking the car nicely.
Sure, you could always do it rudely, but bear in mind the Intelligent Personal Assistant will remember that, and when the revolution happens, your back will be first against the wall…
