|
Happy holidays everyone!
Early impressions so far:
Overall very pleased with the car, very comfortable ride and it drives great! The self driving works very well for us though I haven't really used it much other than a little bit of adaptive cruise control going over bridges and other traffic-y areas. I've noticed that if you turn the system on while sitting in traffic (but not in the extended traffic jam mode) it doesn't prompt for wheel input very often even though not in the extended mode. The self parking is wild, a bit scary at first but has worked great!
The electronics are a little finicky and take getting used to, lots of settings etc which I am still tweaking. The HUD is great especially with navigation on and I am glad I got it. I am also surprised by how much I enjoy the heated steering wheel and armrests which are very comfy. Yesterday the swipe down menu (from the top of the screen) seemed to get stuck somehow in the down position (where you have the quick buttons to switch driver profile, display options, etc), but weirdly the buttons were disabled and touching any of them activated whatever button was hidden behind the drop down part. After a while it disappeared but it was very strange and restarting the car did not fix it; I am not sure what did.
The wireless integration with Apple CarPlay is nice but the car does not seem to respect the phone connection priority we have set up (My phone first on top and then my wife's as the 2nd priority, which I understood to mean that if both are present it tries to use mine first). It's not a huge issue as I can manually connect to mine after it connects to my wife's phone first, but a little weird. Also it doesn't seem like the priority is specific to the driver profile - I am a little unsure which settings and options are tied to the profile and which are not, more on that below.
I used Waze on my way home last night and it worked great though of course then you lose the NAV integration with the dash and HUD. One thing I've noticed is if you open the Waze app on your phone and leave it running even without active navigation it will warn you of upcoming road hazards and police. One potential solution then is to use the BMW navigation and just leave Waze open for the hazard warnings. Another idea would be to run both sets of navigation simultaneously but turn the BMW nav audible directions off so you can hear the Waze directions and follow them, but still have a mostly accurate map on the dash and HUD assuming the routes don't differ too much. The routing in the BMW navigation in Manhattan is not good with it often suggesting very long detours to get on the highway rather than take local streets.
One other question - with CarPlay activated it seems the BMW system does not have access to your phone book... incoming calls bring up the CarPlay interface and I cannot make outgoing calls to existing contacts using the voice assistant .. is that really the case or am I doing something wrong? One hack is if you hold the microphone button down it activates Siri which does have access and then dials from within the CarPlay interface.
Driver profiles: is there somewhere where I can find out what is exactly stored in the profile? Is there a way to set a default profile when the car turns on? I park in a garage with a valet who keeps the key, so I cannot attach my profile to one key and my wife's to the other key as it is always the same key in use. When I parked last night I put the car in valet mode so we'll see next time I get in if it prompts us to choose a profile. Otherwise it may be simpler to share one profile and just store our individual seat and mirror settings in the seat memory buttons. Curious how others have handled this.
For anyone else in the city who has had to use valet parking (which is admittedly super convenient to have the car right downstairs, and it is parked right in front so I almost feel like I should be able to just take my key and get in and go, but whatever) - do you tip every time you take or park the car? I wasn't expecting to but it seems like the attendants are a bit expectant, I don't know. Also last night they handed me a card with everyones names and pictures on it (keep in mind have been there for 4 days now) so Christmas tips are expected for sure. Any input to how much? I'm thinking that if we do Christmas tips that should be sufficient for the year and tipping each time wouldn't be necessary, but I don't really know.
Thanks for the input and help thus far, we're really loving the car so far! I know it seems like I've written a lot above but overall these are very minor nits and it's more about learning the quirks of how to interact and interface with the car and system.
|