In recent years, BMW and Audi have emerged as technological juggernauts, pushing cutting-edge new cabin electronics in their
cars. Today BMW announced a bundle of new features for its cars that trumps Audi in some ways, and plays catch-up in others.
The most obvious change we will see comes next year, with a new iDrive
controller that BMW calls iDrive Touch. It uses the familiar
dial/joystick hybrid on the console, and adds a touch pad to its top.
With this touch pad, drivers can trace letters and numbers to input
addresses into the navigation system. iDrive Touch also supports
gestures for controlling the onscreen map. The driver can pinch to zoom
or swipe to pan.
As nice as this new controller looks, Audi showed off a similar concept for the cabin of the new A3 at CES this year.
