Upgrade towards connected Drive Services

[ErikJ]

Hello,

I purchased back in February 2013 a new Z4 - LCI version, here in Belgium.
I had at the time heard and read about "Connected Drive Services" , especially "Google Send-to-Car" sounded very attractive to have.
The dealer was convinced that Send To Car would become active here in Belgium, once G4 would be implemented here.
I purchased as such all internet releated options in the car, including Apps and BMW-Live.
The car got delivered in May of this year. As expected there was no "Send-To Car" yet.
As of last month G4 is availble and I started to query about "Send to Car". In the meantime BMW released a new "Connected Drive Services" option, only available in cars manufactered as of July 2013.
I understood however that there is no program (yet?) to upgrade the existing i-drive system towards a system that allows me to participate at this Connected Drive services era. (Even this being a brand new latest model car.)
As you can imagine I'm very disapointed and worried that the BMWLive option, that I have, will be very fast outdated an that BMW engineering is only going to put energy into developing "Connected Drive Services" enabled i-drive cars Apps.

I was wondering if anyone knows if there is a scheduled i-drive upgrade towards "Connected Drive Services" in the planning?

[mbetoni]

Your post is a little confusing, I'm not sure why (you may have a different idea of how it should work and/or are trying to accomplish something different), BUT I can tell you what works for me and how.

I have a 2014 35is, so LCI model. I have Nav w/ Connected Drive (USA) and a BMW Assist account. Now, the "send to car" feature is NOT a feature of Connected Drive (USA), but rather an aspect of having the Nav and a BMW Assist account. I know this is confusing, as in the EU Assist is called Connected Drive Services - which is sounds like you have, so we're talking about the same thing. Connected Drive (USA) is simply the ability to have certain apps on the phone the car can control, a news reader (forget the name) being one example. For the record, I never use the Connected Drive apps.

Now, I do send directions to my car from Google ALL the time, in fact, I don't think I've used the iDrive interface to enter a destination yet. Here's how that works:

1. Go to maps.google.com, and enter a destination. Please note: you can NOT send routes to the car at this time (grrrrrr!), only single destinations.

2. Once the destination has come up, click the "share" icon that's directly to the right of the printer icon above the destination information in the left-hand column (left of the map).

3. The pop-up window that gets generated when you click that icon contains a text link that says "Send". Click it.

4. This generates yet another pop-up with the options to Send the destination via email, to a car or to a GPS device. Choose "car".

5. You'll then be asked for the make of car (in our case, BMW) and your BMW Assist (Connected Drive Services for you) account email.

6. Hit send. If you've entered the correct email, it should send the directions to your car.

7. In the car, go to "Office" then "Messages" within iDrive. You should see your destination in the Messages window, once you've chosen it the car will ask if you want to set that as the nav destination and voila.

Hope that helps.

[mstevens]

Originally Posted by mbetoni

Once the destination has come up, click the "share" icon that's directly to the right of the printer icon above the destination information in the left-hand column (left of the map)..

This isn't the way you do this in "Classic" Google Maps, but in the new interface, there is no printer icon above the destination information. The "Share" button on the right side just does some stupid Google+ stuff.

[mbetoni]

Originally Posted by mstevens

This isn't the way you do this in "Classic" Google Maps, but in the new interface, there is no printer icon above the destination information. The "Share" button on the right side just does some stupid Google+ stuff.

I'm using Classic Google Maps and the icons I described are there. They are most definitely NOT there in the 'new' Google maps, one of the reasons I still use Classic.

The "share" icon looks like a chain link and is immediately next to the printer icon, and these both are to the right of the "Get Directions" and "My Places" buttons. This cluster of icons/buttons is directly below the Google logo and search field at the top left of the page.

[mstevens]

Originally Posted by mbetoni

I'm using Classic Google Maps and the icons I described are there.

Ah - my bad. You have to have the left panel open, which I didn't.

Originally Posted by mbetoni

The "share" icon looks like a chain link

Turns out it's the "Link" icon, according to the tooltip, not "Share", but it is there as you describe.

You can accomplish the same thing (with or without the left panel open) by clicking on the POI flag on the map, selecting the "more" dropdown, then "Send". This is how I'd always done it in the past.