Ray Hull

Tom Incantalupo, a long-time political reporter for Newsday, who now does hardhitting things like home energy conservation and auto test drives was flummoxed by the iDrive (news??) and especially hated the 7 spd SMG on the M5.

Normally, I wouldn't pay much heed to him, but this is big BMW market, and he links the complexity of the iDrive to road safety hazard (no mention of the Lawyer's Screen). And he backs up his contentions with low marks on a J.D. Powers study of new owners satisfaction with car's operation.

Read all about it: http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-sstom18...ness-columnists

Cheers,
Ray Hull

m630

your first line says it all....what does a politician wannabe know about cars??? sure idrive the first day is abit complex, but after a few hours it becomes second nature and quite intuitive with voice commands...and only a RETA*D would not like SMG III on the Ms, it is amazing....btw, has anyone You know been asked by JD crap and Co about your satisfaction??? i know i've never been asked in all the cars i've ever owned, only those that would complain about anything are willing to partake...4 years full coverage so no need to worry about a thing

EBMCS03

One persons opinion. I wont even bother reading it.

dlevi67

As you put it: "news??"

Incantalupo (lovely name; "wolf charmer") finds "[The i-Drive] is slow to react, often nonintuitive and dangerously distracting."

So do 90% of other journalists in many countries (well: UK, France, Italy and Spain at least), and it seems to be a fairly recurrent topic of dissatisfaction on this forum too - at least the slowness and software complexity resulting in glitches.

If anything, I think that the iDrive is too ergonomically effective - with the exception of main climate controls. With how many other navigation systems would you even be tempted to input a destination while driving??? Or how many other RDS tuners are designed so smartly as to sort all the radio stations available alphabetically so you know "where" they are even if you don't know their broadcast frequency? But all this means more attention on the iDrive - because now you can... - and less on the road.

My guess is that as cars become more "intelligent", or at least more customisable by the end-user - and there's probably no stopping this trend: we all love gizmos, or we'd all be buying Lotus Elises - we need to re-learn to drive and interact with the car. And this takes time - which many of us do not have, or choose not to use for something we feel we already (should) know.

The worrying thing is that all it will take is one high profile incident to have talks of banning iDrive-like systems or other similar draconian reactions.

BTW: As far as his SMG issues go, it seems he was trying to drive what is basically a sporty manual shift as if it were an automatic with torque converter. He should be thankful that the car did not stall, or cause him some whiplash... Bah!

Having said that, the DSG system in Audi/VW is smoother and faster in normal use than BMW's SMG, and it interferes less than Steptronic.

tachyon

And not one word from this dope on how these cars drive. How does one write a car review and not report on acceleration, handling, braking ... ?

I guess that's what you learn by reporting politics: policies and issues matter most, not actual results.

EBMCS03

Dope... AHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHA

znod

I didn't read the piece, but I would say that the fancy tech on autos these days can lead to many driving distractions--although we all know that we shouldn't be trying to do things we are not very familiar with while driving. I know that I have been distracted by trying to get something to work while driving.

dlevi67

Oh, come on, be fair to the guy. He did after all give you manufacturer's figures for acceleration. And do you really want him to be trying to beat those when he can't even see how fast he's going in the HUD?

Refujeet

I received a JD Powers survey. It was wierd because I just picked up the car a little over a month ago. The survey was 6 pages long, about the car, the dealer experience and if I cross shopped with a Jag S-Type (WTF?) and something else (I forgot what the other cars were, I only remember the S-Type because it was soo not a car I would ever look at or buy).

I was honest in my evaluation. Perfect Score!

znod

The survey undoubedly was JD's initial quality survey. Did it ask about design defects, not just actual defects?