Love it or loathe it, the future of car interiors is mostly about screens. BMW is ready to deliver the goods and cater to the smartphone-loving audience. With iDrive X, jumbo-sized displays mounted front and center are coming to all cars, and that touchscreen will measure a whopping 17.9 inches. Where does that leave the old iDrive controller? In the past. That’s right – future models from Bavaria won’t have the rotary selector.
We’re all tempted to say the German luxury brand is deleting the knob purely to cut costs. Removing a piece of hardware does save a manufacturer money, but the iDrive dial is dying for additional reasons. Speaking with BMWBLOG this week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, a BMW representative said owners mostly rely on the touchscreen to interact with their cars.
Internal studies have revealed that owners are using the iDrive knob less often as the years go by. In addition, many of the apps developed by BMW have been optimized to work with touch inputs. With the touchscreen, tinkering with the customizable widgets of iDrive X will be faster and easier. The new display is three inches bigger, making it a breeze to quickly access your preferred functions.
Moreover, third-party apps are generally not optimized to work with the iDrive controller, and to some extent, that holds true for the air conditioning functions. BMW says owners prefer to use the center screen or voice controls to change settings. Gesture controls are also disappearing due to a lack of usage and massive improvements made to voice commands.
Even before iDrive X, the iDrive knob has already disappeared from some models. You won’t find it in BMW’s compact cars based on a front-wheel-drive platform. The X1, X2, 1 Series, 2 Series Gran Coupe, and the 2 Series Active Tourer have all lost the dial. Launched last year, the X3 (G45) is likely the last new model to feature the controller, which was first implemented on the 7 Series (E65) in 2001.
Fun fact: The ultra-luxury ZBF concept from the mid-1990s, kept secret until just a few years ago, had an early version of iDrive.