BMW Exec: Young People Prefer Voice and Screens over Buttons

> They want things done quickly and they’re multitasking.

Nothing is faster than a dedicated button that can be used without taking your eyes off the road.

People should not be “multitasking” while driving. If they are already multitasking, adding another task (navigating a touch screen or arguing with a voice assistant) is not a good thing.

BMW is supposed to be the “ultimate driving machine”, not the ultimate multitasking machine. I remember my dad getting a 5 Series around 2000, and he noted how terrible the cup holders were. Apparently when he asked, the response he got was that they were just there because Americans demanded it, but they (BMW in Germany) don’t believe people should be eating/drinking in their cars, so they made the worst cup holders possible. Malicious compliance.

I’d also be interested in how many “young people” are buying BMWs. All I hear about is how expensive cars are and how little money young people have.

Let's see how well this works out for them. I'm not hopeful for BMW (or most non-Chinese car manufacturers - not that the Chinese cars are great, just that they've got the economies of scale pretty well locked up), on a number of fronts.

Someone I regularly get driven around by is fine using voice to interact with google / android auto to send messages and make phone calls in the car is also not fine at all with not having buttons for 'basic traditional car things'.

I have a relatively 'newfangled' EV, and one of the best things about it is that it has a physical button for defrosting the front windscreen. If I had to navigate the touchscreen every time, the car would probably have been written off already (although all the safety things may have offset that outcome). Using the touchscreen to change from carplay to radio would have been a 'pull over to the side and spend a minute navigating the screens' scenario if I didn't have a passenger, which is somewhat of a peeve of mine.

I'm not sure voice recognition is in a good enough state to depend on for things that should be quick button presses. Phase it in over a number of years, sure, make it optional.

"They want things done quickly and they’re multitasking. And we have to keep that in mind. That’s how customers are evolving. They are multitasking.”

I don't want other drivers on the road to be multi-tasking. I want them to be driving at as close to 100% concentration as possible. It doesn't surprise me that it's younger people who are doing this: they haven't experienced enough near-misses yet. If stats are showing that drivers are multi-tasking, this should be discouraged, not encouraged.

Having said that, I miss the age cut-off by a margin, so factor that in. Maybe it's just me and a cloud.

I can’t wait for cars to get native speech recognition and understanding models. Right now talking to a car is such a bad experience, but the local model tech is already at a point where we could already just have KITT in our cars without any network access at all (hopefully Anthony^H^H^HWilliam Daniels licenses his voice out it, I can dream cant I?).

The kind of 'young people' who purchase new BMWs - a very high end luxury appliance - are not an 'average consumer' I feel.