BMW shows first of four concept cars detailing the future of driving

BMW is looking toward the next 100 years as its celebrates is centennial anniversary. The German automaker will be unveiling four concept cars that will set the tone for product and design development in the coming century. 

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BMW plans major internal overhaul to further self-driving/smart car initiatives

BMW doesn’t want outsiders coming in, or rather, they don’t want to be the “Foxconn for a company like Apple, delivering only the metal bodies for them.” According to Klaus Froehlich, a BMW board member who oversees research and development, told Reuters at the Geneva auto show that the German automaker is planning major corporate changes to build its “most intelligent car.” The company doesn’t want to rely on the Internet players like Google and Apple out of fear that they might just become another supplier. Even though, it might be beneficial for them to tap the tech players who are more familiar with software.

BMW supposedly plans to have half of its R&D team become computer programmers within the next five years. At the moment, just about 20 percent of its 30,000 R&D team work in software. Not all of these would come in-house, though. Froehlich believes they would need to partner with others and outsource some of the work. BMW has supposedly held talks with Apple before but haven’t reportedly come close to an agreement.

Source: Apple Insider

BMW’s AirTouch introduces gesture-based control into your car

CES 2016 is turning more into a car technology show. BMW, one of the many car makers making their way to Las Vegas next year, will be introducing a refinement to its new gesture-based control system the company calls AirTouch. It makes use of sensors so you can control things like navigation, entertainment, and communication using “simple gestures” made with a flat hand and you don’t even have to make contact with the panorama display.

First making its appearance in the BMW 7 Series as a Gesture Control feature, AirTouch introduces a new concealed button on the rim of the steering wheel and in the side sill of the door area for the passenger side. This makes it easy to navigation the interface. You can also just tap on it once to change a setting or go to a desired menu or program. For the passenger, you can use one hand to navigate through the menus and the other to input things quickly. We should see demos of this feature at CES, which is starting in a few days, and perhaps we also get news when they plan to deploy this to the public.

Source: BMW | Via: Paste Magazine

BMW expected to introduce AirTouch technology at CES

CES 2016 is expected to have a huge slant towards automotive technologies with the most ever car companies on exhibit and various announcements expected to shake things up in the market. BMW is slated to unveil the AirTouch system which enables control of touchscreens without having to actually touch them. 

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