Just come back from a haul down the UK and back up - 1,100 miles over the weekend, with trailer, in the dark, ice and fog. Car performed brilliantly and the nav proved to be invaluable going cross-country.

However, one irritation is the apparent lack of a "route via" function - which I have on ?25 Autoroute on the PC, and my ?100 yacht GPS but apparently not in a ?1,600 BMW Nav.
I know certain routes are traffic nightmare so want to force via a particular route, but don't seem to be able to do this automatically. Stuck in a traffic jam on the A34 I had to manually enter two intermediate destinations to get the route I wanted - not ideal i-Drive operations swapping destinations on icy B-roads at -4C.

Am I missing some undocumented feature (re-route for x miles seems to be useless feature)

 

:thumbsdown: Feature unavailable

 

I would love to have it (Garmin and our Subaru have it), but I can't find it, either. Maybe its in the manual?

 

I looked for a while for a 'route via' function when I first got my E61 (with Pro Nav) and couldn't find it. It seems you can set an alternative route for x miles, but not intermediate routes. Interestingly, on P138 of my handbook it suggests that the Bus Nav may have the function ... 'During route guidance, you can specify up to two points via wich the route should pass, e.g. places or motorway intersections'. So is this a Bus Nav feature that is not in Pro Nav? I agree that it would be a useful (and probably simple) addition.

 

Unfurtunally no! And I really miss it, had it in our last car (Volvo V70).. All we can to is cross our fingers and hope it will be included in a CIP update one day in the near future..

 

It's planed for the future, but no date yet...

 

Thanks for the info - even if it confirms my thinking that this is a major omission.
If anybody hears when this is coming as a software update lets post it

PS As a "software" car, does BMW have a user group / suggestions process like other software packages?

 

It is strange, as Business Nav has it.

The nearest you can do is stack up a few route subsections in the destination list. Not very elegant though.