Forget About Park Assist, This Is The Future In Automated Driving!

^^^exactly.

the Ultimate Driving Machine is now, the ultimate recliner on wheels!

I'd personally always prefer to drive myself as I enjoy driving just for the sake of driving. BMW are a highly innovative company however and this is a great showcase of their technology and what their tech division is capable of.

Technology, innovation and the "yeah we can do it" factor. In a more practical sense, this makes the "executive limo" role of the 7 or 5 series quite solid. Whilst handling business with my crackberry, papers, laptop, etc, the car can drive. Then when I'm done, I can grab my ultimate driving machine, take control and then have fun.

009, This makes you a hypocrite for criticizing the Lexus self park feature and claiming that its for those who 'cant drive'. Well, that was parking. This is driving the car at high speeds...who cant drive now?

Agreed! LOL!

It seems like this is nothing innovative...
Lexus Parks it self before anyone parks.
This car on the other hand, records your driving course, and repeat everything you did. How easy is that?
It's not like Lexus to where it chooses it owns coordinates, like a analytical thinking machine....This car is just a record player....

M35MT-

"009, This makes you a hypocrite for criticizing the Lexus self park feature and claiming that its for those who 'cant drive'."

LOL - you caught that huh? Now it is pretty neat BUT it has to make in production before I can pick on it.

There is a big difference between going 100mph on a closed at the limits all of the way, and taking 5 mins to park a car when a competent driver can do it in under one.

But right now I am not sure how BMW plans to use the technology in the real world.

Actually Vendetta- I have been all over this for about two years now. So if you missed that part then you my friend you are behind. But BMW has matured their portion of the equation go beyond barely preforming a task. So that is why it counts.

silver1- You might want to check the history books. Self park has been around in one form or another since 2003.

The point is, it does show that they can innovate anything. They had park assist available on their 2002 5 series wagons by the way. It was nothing new when that one company thought it was cool to bring here.

Correct, but when another company touts the same technology as "ground breaking" and markets the heck out of it. Only then do the fan boys take notice.

I guess that shows how you can get locked into your own world and not realize that what is new, is really what is old, sometimes.

Did you let go of the BMW's steering wheel and it parked itself the same way the LS does? Can you provide evidence of this? Beeping warning sounds dont count.

That car seems to drive better than Jeremy himself.

Probably knows it limits better than Jeremy. It think it would have been better if he sat in the passenger seat.

Agent 009 lol, Great Idea!

search for VW Gold drives itself .. on Autospies.com!

If you would pay attention to your own website (I am talking to the AGENTS) you will see VW has a car that completely drives itself. This bimmer is just following the path it memorized before, it's a pretty easy thing to do. Just follow the accurate GPS step by step and do not accelerate more than the system can handle (all sensors already are in place, like in any regular/other car-esp, abs, etc..).

The VW Golf I am talking about it's actually scanning the environment and building the road in it's head/computer.

Difference: drop a cone in the middle of the track for the bimmer, it will HIT it. same thing for the VW it will avoid it at FULL speed.

This is so lame ..

This would be a great ride at an amusement park, but definitely not something I'd be into for the street, although some drivers out there could certainly use this and make the streets a better place for the rest of us..

Yeah that's all cool and stuff, but does it self-park?

After all, the Lexus LS460 can park itself in und3r 5 minutes ;)

You realize how long 5 minutes is when parking a car?

Enough to get you shot at in some parts of the country.

but now this won't be seen as pointless and and all that. Word pointless is only used here (in autospies), when Lexus come up with a new technology.

but i am definately going to congratulte BMW if that tuns out to be true. Great engineering (but i think won't be production ready by anytime soon).

JUGNU

Agreed!

Didn't VW show similar technology a year or so ago? I remember a Golf being able to drive itself around a track, and it figured out the obstacles. I could be wrong.

Yes but not at those speeds.

LMAO!!!!

yes, VW has been doing this for a while now.
In a Discovery channel TV show called 2057, the world in 50 years, the segment on automobiles showed Audi/VW cars diving by themselves.

This is far from being news, every manufacturer has been working on that stuff at least since the 70's.

It's okay you can all resume your normal activities.

LOL

Ouch!

Brave
Mechanical
Wonders

Breakdown
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Willingly

A Gnome Exhibits No Talent

I Love to DRIVE, but since I live in LA, with LA traffic I have to get out of the county to find good roads to have fun on. So, the idea of a car that can take care of the CHORE of city driving I gladly welcome any day of the week.

Thanks to me for posting this article two days ago.

As long as you can turn it off, it's interesting. I agree with KillBot in that it's very useful in stop-and-go traffic... but then again, adaptive cruise may make even more sense for that. I love driving, though, and would definitely NOT buy a car that only drives itself.

This is purely to made for BMW Fahrer training.

It's brilliant

in fact, bmw had this car back in end 2005

before lexus self-park or vw gti self-drive

well this technology doesnt seem to be very useful... all luxury cars are meant to be enjoyed on the wheel rather than trusting a computer to do it.