My BMW 4+

Being able to directly send directions or destinations to the Connected app was available once upon a time, but mysteriously disappeared some months back, much to my dismay. But My BMW thankfully brings it back where it belongs. You can now find your destination using the app you always use on your phone, and push it directly to the My BMW app where it then gets sent to the vehicle. Perfect. Otherwise it’s white instead of black, and boldly makes use of the phrase “ALL GOOD”, which is neither here nor there. The Device Connection function now shows what’s connected and how it’s connected to the vehicle via Bluetooth, which is nice. A very handy addition is that vehicle odometer and VIN are shown right from the My Garage screen, handy if you want to quickly check either without walking out to the car. Feature idea: allow users to add the license plate number to the garage screen. This is handy when you want to pull that up quick, say when you’re checking into a hotel, etc. App is a smooth experience overall and aesthetically more pleasant.

The apps functionality is pretty great overall, I’ve actually never had problems with checking the status of my car or giving it commands except for when service is spotty, but that is to be expected. I like that I can see how soon it will be done charging and the status of the battery.
Being able to preheat the cabin is also an amazing feature!
My only complaint is that when route planing, the BMW app recognizes lots of random, uncharted chargers, as well as EVgo. That’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s missing the largest and easiest charge network which is Electrify America. Depending on where you are, EVgo is ridiculously expensive and charges a fee just to start a charge. I find that stupid as you also have to pay to charge by the minute, which was outlawed in California for a reason. Almost half of all fast chargers I have seen are EA, and I’m a monthly member of their network. Because the app doesn’t recognize them, I never use the route planning. Mostly because after trying it once, it had me sit at a slow level 3 awkwardly at a dealership only for me to find out on the EA app, there was a much faster charger two blocks away. You could imagine the frustration. I think it’s time EA be added to the app, especially before the launch of the iX and i4. If you want to prove there’s places everywhere to charge, why not put them all on the map?

Despite having the capability, which worked flawlessly for about 8 months after purchasing the car, I suddenly lost this function in the old application. It simply stopped connecting. Now this new application doesn’t even recognize that I have the feature enabled, which I do. I’ve done a lot of research, tried every suggestion and reset, waited for updates and restarted iDrive to no avail. Given the amount of problems I see reported online with the remote 3D functionality, it would be helpful if BMW addressed the issue inside of the application. It would be helpful to have a proactive list of problems with troubleshooting suggestions. The only I options I see is scheduling a unique dealer visit or waiting until a normal maintenance schedule. The new application isn’t otherwise bad at all, but it lacks a clear way to communicate something that may have happened to my remote 3D feature that seems relatively common, again based on frequency of online reporting. If the app had a solution, communicated better, perhaps with a more robust troubleshooting/help section, it would certain seem to me worth 5 stars. It’s the the only thing I can think of holding it back at the moment. After all of the features this car has, the best when parked, is hands down having the car send a photo of its surroundings.