Skip to main content

BMWs of the future will have Samsung tablets and gesture control

BMWs of the future will have Samsung tablets and gesture control

Share this story

At CES this week, BMW showed off a couple near-future technologies that'll be available on cars in the next few years. The first doesn't really sound futuristic at all — it's just a generic Samsung tablet, but the magic is in how tightly BMW's managed to integrate it with the car's systems. The "Touch Command" system includes the small Android tablet and a dock in the rear seat, allowing rear passengers to change climate settings, switch radio stations, adjust their seats, and more — in other words, it's basically a portable iDrive controller for when you're getting chauffeured around.

None of this is coming for a year or two

The most interesting thing about it is that the tablet is customized by Samsung for BMW: pressing the home button doesn't kick you out to the home screen on a normal Android device, it returns you to Touch Command's main screen. If you want to use the tablet simply as an Android tablet — which you can do — you need to choose the "Apps" option inside Touch Command to get kicked out to a launcher. BMW says it hasn't settled on a tablet model or size yet for when Touch Command reaches production, but it'll take a year or two anyway.

BMW

Next — and far more interesting to drivers — is a revamped iDrive system that supports touchscreen and gesture control. The touchscreen aspect isn't a big deal (many cars have them), but the gestures are awesome. Using a camera mounted in the car's roof, it looks for one of several gestures made by the driver's right hand like a swipe, a circular motion, or a two-fingered poke in the direction of the screen. All of them can be programmed to one of several functions — for instance, the circular motion can turn volume up and down, and a swipe can reject an incoming call. It's similar to the system Volkswagen showed yesterday on its Golf R Touch, and it seems to be indicative of a new trend in car interfaces — expect to see a lot more of this over the coming years.

See all the latest CES 2015 news here ›