Can confirm. BMW used to be quite innovative, at least on the scale of German automakers, with their connect services. We have a fairly well equipped and fairly new BMW which includes those services. Not only can they get quite expensive (especially their incredibly pretentious concierge service), but their smartphone integration is awful at least (CarPlay is a subscription). The only connected drive services that could be remotely useful are so bad, they're basically unusable.

> It’s starting to happen and will get even worse, BMW will have a tough decade at least.

The only innovation BMW was able to come up with in the last few years is increasing the size of the front grill. I am not sure if BMW is incompetent, ignorant, uncreative or if they're just aholes (looking at managements behavior during the pandemic, that's certainly the case).

I doubt that BMW will be able to maintain its independence as a car manufacturer in the long run, unless there are some dramatic changes in line. My guess is that they'll be acquired by some other car manufacturer, maybe Daimler (although they face similar challenges), but more likely some huge Chinese company.

I spent a long time sceptical about that other car company. But I've realised I can never overestimate how much the traditional companies will screw up.

Just look at their model range nowadays, it's vast, confusing and insipid. Very little of it is inspiring unless you think 650bhp in an SUV is interesting.

Depends on where you live. I drive a really small but acceptably fast car, but I'm frequently surrounded by giant lifted trucks that block all visibility. I want a taller vehicle just so I don't die, but don't want to give up the 6 second 0-60.

Unless you are sub 3s, mostly what you need is a bit of torque lower in the range, and a suspension & tires that can deliver it to the road. This, along with transmission ratios, trades off against other things people often want in their cars.

hp above 300ish is mostly about what happens (or doesn't happen) at triple digit speeds, at least for regular passenger vehicles not towing large loads. The latter is all about torque available at what range but that can push you into higher hp territory.

Thanks BMW! Get your shit together! Anyway, this anecdote is just a taste of what is coming for the car industry. Carplay is only a small preview of the level of integration consumers are going to expect over the next 5-10 years. If they can't sort out a digital key across their lineup, they are kind of fucked.

Think that digital key is going to work in 20 years when you're on iOS 44 or whatever? I'd be genuinely shocked.

Oh absolutely. The infotainment system of the German premium automakers is utter trash. It's slow, overwhelming and incredibly tedious to use. My family owns five cars, a BMW, an Audi, a Seat and 2 VW, except for one VW they are all fairly new. The BMW and the Audi infotainment system are equally bad, by far the best ones are integrated in the Volkswagen vehicles. But when comparing them with competitors like Tesla, they still suck.

I don't like Tesla, but credit where credit is due. They software concept for their vehicles is innovative, thought out and incredibly feature rich. If this is what VW, Daimler and BMW aim for, they still have an incredibly long way to go.

I've been looking at BMWs this year and IIRC they backed out of this after the backlash: https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/technology/bmw-u-turns-ap... - agree with your other points though.

It's hard to believe that nobody came up with a good/open AV integration for mobile/smart phones a decade ago. Gotta love proprietary interfaces that stop getting updates 2 years in for a car that should last 10+ years at least.

They launched their MBUX platform a few years ago and hat huge goals, since I don't own a mercedes, I don't know if they managed to keep up with those. However, from what I read online, it doesn't look like it

Fortunately they cut that shit out a year ago: https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/4/20995630/bmw-apple-carpla...

Compare that with the M2 which is a looker and a badass car.

I'm also pretty annoyed with the current direction, and if I get another car (performance or otherwise) it's very unlikely to be a BMW.

I'm still too poor to buy one new, but it didn't seem completely without innovation.

Those aren't innovations, those are almost standard in lots of vehicles.

But BMW has been rewarded for producing over-styled cars that are more known as a status symbol by the general public than as a benchmark for fun, practical, rwd cars. They have been plagued with absolutely shameful longevity issues, caused by mind boggling engineering decisions, and catering primarily to people that love cars will never be the most profitable option.

They aren't alone, Mercedes has made many of the same choices, although Porsche remains relatively true to form, with the people who choose to buy them being no fault of theirs.

BMW has always first and foremost been a logo marketing company. They exist so moderately rich people can show off how moderately rich they are by driving a car with a BMW logo on it.

They definitely were a car enthusiast company, at some point. My next car will be Japanese.

"The father buys, the son builds, the grandchild sells, and his son begs"

The grandchildren are too far removed from what it took to raise the golden cow. So they just milk it.

This seems like a vast understatement. The article is about a BMW campaign in which BMW will pay a lot of money to shame BMW customers and send a very very strong message to anyone who sees these billboards: DON'T BUY BMW.

Somebody inside BMW has an axe to grind and has decided their coworkers are a bunch of idiots. Rather than quit, they've decided to use their coworkers' stupidity against the company. In a too impossible to be be true storyline, they keep pitching obviously self-destructive strategies to their coworkers who lap them up and implement them.

The thing with a big knob behind the gear stick was really hard to use (i-Drive from years ago)

I'm not in the automotive circle... what do you mean by this? Do they outsource everything now?

From "mobility" to a "services" company, the worst part is they see "making cars people want to buy" as an embarrassment and the whole transition period of "We now make cars the chinese tell us they want, because they are the ones buying them until we reach our Nirvana" it's just corporate sleazeball speak to "let's keep the wheel spinning because we made a terrible mistake but i don't want to lose my job".