My 2004 August build 530d has professional navigation and cute button on the steering wheel for voice control. Pressing the button has no effect whatsoever. The published option list only shows the Professional Nav but it is normal practice in the Car manufacturing to only show the main options as when in build the Main option calls in the parts of any sub option.

Can anyone shed light on this situation.

 

?t's a separate option from Prof Nav in Europe. you can retrofit it by running the cable, adding the microphone in the headliner, and getting the programming to enable it. quite frankly, not worth the effort unless you also have bluetooth and want to voice dial.

 

Yes I have bluetooth so doesn't this offer voice dial

 

If it helps, I can tell you my experience with voice control. I was quite pleased to see that this car had it when I was considering buying it. The idea of having it had impressed me for a while. When I finally did get the car, I played with the VC for a while. I even downloaded a PDF showing me all the commands. I filtered out a short list of commands I'd realistically use and printed it out and put it in the car. When family and friends wanted to come for a drive in my new car, of course I wanted to impress them with how I can talk to my car. A month into ownership it becomes old news. There's only one single command I ever use it for now, and that's the speed limit setting. I press the button and say LIMIT and it brings the limit screen up where I can enter the speed I want the warning bong to sound at. I have it set at 120 for the roads with 100 limit so I know when I'm going dangerously over it (dangerous in terms of getting points on my license if I get caught on camera). Finding the limit screen in the menu is too many menu clicks and scrolls compared to shouting limit at the VC, but I don't use it for anything else at all. If I were to order a new car now and VC was an option that cost as little as $200 I wouldn't bother. It would probably have to be under $100 and then I'd only really be buying it to make resale easier having a good selection of options.

 

the command i use the most is display off.
its just that i cant remember all the commands and the fact you press the voiced button wait for the beep to talk = and i keep forgetting ot wait and it says command not recognised.
But i also do the same drive day in / out so really no need to experience with many other commands