The New BMW 318d with the F30 body, it's oozing with smart electronics and thought-through features that keep me amazed. My latest experience highlights why this is a really cool car for cosmopolitan cruisers. Let me give you three reasons why.
1. Fly and Drive, worry-free. Fly out of the country, fly back, start your car with the press of a button, and drive away instantly.
I was in Singapore again for two full weeks and like many, I don't have a driver to periodically run my car on idle just to maintain he battery while I'm out, and I'm not eager to have someone else drive my car, so I keep it in a garage. After getting back, the battery of my other car was totally flat. No chance to start it. Not so the BMW! Happily, with just one press, the engine powers up and the whole car comes back to life. Easy. Smooth. And I can drive away immediately with no maintenance pause to go in with life and my schedule.
Photo above with the BMW 318d was at one of the premiere hotels in Manila, where I was to have a late lunch with my wife.
I had the same experience previously with a three-week trip. Yes, 3 weeks! The car started with no difficulty whatsoever, and I wrote about my delight in a blog "Amazed with the BMW Battery Power Management". The car was two months old then, and the car is now more than a year old, so I was eager to validate that the battery power management has not changed. To my glee, yes, restarting after a period of not being used is not a problem. This is a really great feature for anyone who flys out on business or pleasure and prefers to just keep his or her car locked up.
2. Stay connected on your phone, conveniently, and elegantly to keep in touch with global or local contacts, for business or pleasure. Bluetooth-connected car audio systems are now pretty common. I've had hands-free audio systems connected to my car speakers since 2005. Although really, not all cars have it. Surprisingly the Audi A4 being offered to me in January to May 2013 didn't have a Bluetooth-connected car audio. That was a huge downer for me, and caused me to narrow my choice between a BMW and a Mercedes Benz (and I'm really glad I got the BMW!).
But what sets apart the BMW phone connectedness compared to more conventional cars is for me, overall design superiority and execution. You can read from my previous blog that with BMW, nothing is left to chance, so every button, every sound, every touch and feel of a knob and the response, are all studied and engineered. With the BMW, you have 3 options to make calls, not counting options of touching your phone shortcut buttons or activating Siri to place your calls. On the car you can (a) access the phone button on your multi-function steering wheel and choose contacts from the dashboard, (b) access programmed shortcut buttons on your audio system and view the read outs from the audio system, or (c) use the iDrive controller with a dedicated telephone button that you can activate without even looking, then view the menus and your
full phone books with BMW ConnecteDrive and the large, flat-screen anti-glare Control Display. This lets you immediately access all the numbers you've previously called and all the contacts who've recently called you. Simple. Direct.
And even if you have to search your phonebook for a new contact or dial numbers directly, the intuitive programming and eye-easy graphical displays makes these actions very simple even while driving. Now add to these the excellent sound insulation inside the BMW cabin and a highly sensitive microphone placed near to where you would naturally speak while in a normal driving position such that you don't have to strain while conversing, and what you get is a superb sound room for making calls. In fact, calling and having conversations in the new BMW 318d is so convenient and conducive, that I even prefer to make calls while driving.
Another laudable and enjoyable feature of making calls in the BMW is that the sound quality and sound levels are finely tuned so it feels like you have a professional sound engine backstage in your car somewhere. Especially when listening to music, making a call, then ending the call, you don't get harsh crackling sounds and abrupt cutting-in and cutting out. Instead, you get a quiet, gentle click from ending the call, whereafter your music will tenderly cut-in, quietly at first, then go back to the volume you had set. Beautiful.
3. Power to exhilarate while you accelerate. The 318d has a very powerful twin turbo engine with very subdued noise levels compared to other modern Diesel engines. And the particulate filter traps diesel soot and burns them off intermittently, resulting to a maintenance-free setup, in a clean and quiet package. Of course as a world-traveller exposed to global standards and clean cities, if you could you wouldn't want to be caught driving around a noisy, smoke-belching and foul-smelling Diesel engine, which is quite common even in brand new vehicles of other brands.
Then with power, the twin turbo engine combined with an eight-speed (yes, 8!) transmission give very smooth with neck-pulling acceleration. This is both a thrill and a joy, and safe as long as you keep that power under control.
Read more features of the new BMW from these two articles
Why buying a BMW is more than just about buying a great car.
My first BMW, a luxury in cars, why I got it.
"Nothing is left to chance" with the new BMW. No luck or coincidences here. Every upgrade, every increased functionality, every new aesthetic curve matched to performance is designed, tested, built. As one who appreciates great design, I believe in the Creator, God. I cannot accept that billions of years of churning a thousand BMW 3-Series 5th generation cars in some primordial soup can ever spurt out a 3-Series 6th generation, let alone produce a 1st generation 3-Series from dust. So how can a living cell jump out of non-living cells and self-generate design and information complexity from nothing? It would seem clear that one who thinks through and appreciates design and innovation would recognize the Creator, God, and so I hope that you would to.
That's it for now.
What design innovation do you like most in your car? Share it by writing a comment and we can compare notes.
Safe journeying!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
1. Fly and Drive, worry-free. Fly out of the country, fly back, start your car with the press of a button, and drive away instantly.
I was in Singapore again for two full weeks and like many, I don't have a driver to periodically run my car on idle just to maintain he battery while I'm out, and I'm not eager to have someone else drive my car, so I keep it in a garage. After getting back, the battery of my other car was totally flat. No chance to start it. Not so the BMW! Happily, with just one press, the engine powers up and the whole car comes back to life. Easy. Smooth. And I can drive away immediately with no maintenance pause to go in with life and my schedule.
Photo above with the BMW 318d was at one of the premiere hotels in Manila, where I was to have a late lunch with my wife.
I had the same experience previously with a three-week trip. Yes, 3 weeks! The car started with no difficulty whatsoever, and I wrote about my delight in a blog "Amazed with the BMW Battery Power Management". The car was two months old then, and the car is now more than a year old, so I was eager to validate that the battery power management has not changed. To my glee, yes, restarting after a period of not being used is not a problem. This is a really great feature for anyone who flys out on business or pleasure and prefers to just keep his or her car locked up.
2. Stay connected on your phone, conveniently, and elegantly to keep in touch with global or local contacts, for business or pleasure. Bluetooth-connected car audio systems are now pretty common. I've had hands-free audio systems connected to my car speakers since 2005. Although really, not all cars have it. Surprisingly the Audi A4 being offered to me in January to May 2013 didn't have a Bluetooth-connected car audio. That was a huge downer for me, and caused me to narrow my choice between a BMW and a Mercedes Benz (and I'm really glad I got the BMW!).
But what sets apart the BMW phone connectedness compared to more conventional cars is for me, overall design superiority and execution. You can read from my previous blog that with BMW, nothing is left to chance, so every button, every sound, every touch and feel of a knob and the response, are all studied and engineered. With the BMW, you have 3 options to make calls, not counting options of touching your phone shortcut buttons or activating Siri to place your calls. On the car you can (a) access the phone button on your multi-function steering wheel and choose contacts from the dashboard, (b) access programmed shortcut buttons on your audio system and view the read outs from the audio system, or (c) use the iDrive controller with a dedicated telephone button that you can activate without even looking, then view the menus and your
full phone books with BMW ConnecteDrive and the large, flat-screen anti-glare Control Display. This lets you immediately access all the numbers you've previously called and all the contacts who've recently called you. Simple. Direct.
And even if you have to search your phonebook for a new contact or dial numbers directly, the intuitive programming and eye-easy graphical displays makes these actions very simple even while driving. Now add to these the excellent sound insulation inside the BMW cabin and a highly sensitive microphone placed near to where you would naturally speak while in a normal driving position such that you don't have to strain while conversing, and what you get is a superb sound room for making calls. In fact, calling and having conversations in the new BMW 318d is so convenient and conducive, that I even prefer to make calls while driving.
Another laudable and enjoyable feature of making calls in the BMW is that the sound quality and sound levels are finely tuned so it feels like you have a professional sound engine backstage in your car somewhere. Especially when listening to music, making a call, then ending the call, you don't get harsh crackling sounds and abrupt cutting-in and cutting out. Instead, you get a quiet, gentle click from ending the call, whereafter your music will tenderly cut-in, quietly at first, then go back to the volume you had set. Beautiful.
3. Power to exhilarate while you accelerate. The 318d has a very powerful twin turbo engine with very subdued noise levels compared to other modern Diesel engines. And the particulate filter traps diesel soot and burns them off intermittently, resulting to a maintenance-free setup, in a clean and quiet package. Of course as a world-traveller exposed to global standards and clean cities, if you could you wouldn't want to be caught driving around a noisy, smoke-belching and foul-smelling Diesel engine, which is quite common even in brand new vehicles of other brands.
Then with power, the twin turbo engine combined with an eight-speed (yes, 8!) transmission give very smooth with neck-pulling acceleration. This is both a thrill and a joy, and safe as long as you keep that power under control.
Read more features of the new BMW from these two articles
Why buying a BMW is more than just about buying a great car.
My first BMW, a luxury in cars, why I got it.
"Nothing is left to chance" with the new BMW. No luck or coincidences here. Every upgrade, every increased functionality, every new aesthetic curve matched to performance is designed, tested, built. As one who appreciates great design, I believe in the Creator, God. I cannot accept that billions of years of churning a thousand BMW 3-Series 5th generation cars in some primordial soup can ever spurt out a 3-Series 6th generation, let alone produce a 1st generation 3-Series from dust. So how can a living cell jump out of non-living cells and self-generate design and information complexity from nothing? It would seem clear that one who thinks through and appreciates design and innovation would recognize the Creator, God, and so I hope that you would to.
That's it for now.
What design innovation do you like most in your car? Share it by writing a comment and we can compare notes.
Safe journeying!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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