BMW's 2001 introduction of iDrive, its pioneering driver information/entertainment system, was arguably the biggest corporate disaster since Coca-Cola Co. decided to tinker with the formula for its eponymous beverage.
To say that the automotive trade press and nearly every contributor to a Web discussion of the system hated iDrive is a huge understatement. How, one wonders, could anything in an automobile priced from $75,000 generate so much venom, especially considering the design objective and the fact that a driver didn't have to use it?
"The (iDrive) project started in 1998, six years ago," recalls Joe DiNucci, senior vice president of Immersion Corp. Immersion designed haptics profiles—programmable touch feedback—for the system. "BMW deserves credit for seeing over the horizon that the driver interface was becoming increasingly complex, literally overwhelming, and that adding more individual controls was not the answer."
What happens with both semiconductor chips and luxury cars is that market conditions continually force manufacturers to pack more functionality into, at best, the same space occupied by the previous version. For BMW, that meant the portion of the cabin within easy reach of the driver and/or the front-seat passenger.
Eventually, thought the Munich automotive electronics design team headed by Michael Würtenberger, there must be a limit to the number of switches, buttons, and knobs that a driver and passenger could manipulate effectively.
Würtenberger's colleague Hermann Kunzner, head of the group that designed the iDrive user interface, says the design goal was the ability to control a vehicle's climate/comfort, entertainment, and navigation systems via a single-input device that's roughly equivalent to a computer mouse. "We looked at different possibilities for the input, different screen sizes, and which functions had to be accessible through buttons," Kunzner recalls. "There always must be compromises, and iDrive for the 7 Series was the best compromise possible at that time."
A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
The iDrive system on the 7 Series features a display screen, quite large by auto dashboard standards, and a knob or dial located on the center console (Fig. 1). Here, drivers gain access to eight application menus: Climate, Communication, Navigation, and Entertainment, plus BMW Assist, Vehicle, Help, and Configuration.
Operating somewhat like a standard shift, the knob must be pushed in one of eight compass directions to access a particular menu (Fig. 2). Beneath the "hat" and the shell of the knob, which is manufactured by ALPS Electric, are an encoder and belt drive (Fig. 3). The belt wraps around the drive spindle, which is directly mounted to the motor shaft.
"I was in the BMW booth at the auto show when they first introduced iDrive," says Mike Levin, vice president of industrial solutions at Immersion. "People would walk up to kiosks where iDrive demos were set up, try to use it, and get confused. But if I spent 30 seconds with them to show them how to shift from one function to another, rotate through the menu for that function, then press for the selection they want, they were able to move between functions easily and get stuff done. If you go through a little effort, it becomes a very useful system."
The iDrive system gives drivers the ability to control hundreds of functions, far more than can be controlled on other vehicles, with less "clutter" than is typically found on a dashboard. But, the system does involve a learning curve. One showroom salesman estimated that a comfort level could be reached in as little as two weeks.
"[The iDrive] can frustrate some people who have been driving since age 15 and think they should be able to drive any car without having to take a class or read a manual," says Levin.
When the time came to port the iDrive to 5 and 6 Series BMWs, the automaker simplified the system, cutting its menu options in half (Climate, Communication, Navigation, and Entertainment). "This made it quicker to use. Tactile feedback was also changed, and speech processing was improved," says BMW's Kunzner.
"The great advantage in the 5 Series, which is the top of the art, is that the driver can use the system without looking at it," Kunzner adds. "In competing systems, the screen is in a deeper position and the driver can't look at it and look at traffic at the same time."
The circuitry supporting iDrive was a group effort and continues to be a moving target. Firms contributing electronics technology and/or design assistance to iDrive, in addition to Immersion Technology, include ALPS, Analog Devices, Freescale Semiconductor (formerly Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector), Harman Becker, NEC, Oasis Silicon Systems, Renesas Technology, Sharp, Siemens, STMicroelectronics, and Toshiba.
"Our priority was to have a roadmap approach that would allow us to reuse chips in whole or in part," says BMW's Würtenberger. "We talked with silicon suppliers, told them what we would like to do, and did our best to align our roadmap with theirs. We wanted solutions that would allow us to change partners, if that became necessary."
BMW first deployed a communications network (ARCNET) inside a vehicle a decade ago. "We could build customized designs then, but automotive electronics systems today are much larger, more sophisticated, and more complex, and we've had to change our mindset and our culture in order to embrace industry-standard solutions," says Würtenberger.
"Automakers simply can't keep up with the pace of technology without staying on the main road in terms of system design and architecture," he continues. "We can't afford separate, dedicated solutions, so we're using standard operating systems, standard interfaces, like the I2C bus, and standard links like USB. We also have versioning systems and other automated design tools that weren't available 10 years ago."