Imagine being able to tell your car where you want to go in a few words, or pick out your music without taking your eyes off the road. That’s what BMW promises this fall with its new voice control system. BMW (and the rest of the car world) is playing catch-up with Ford’s Sync system. It’s possible BMW has passed Ford on the navigation side; some of the new BMW audio input controls still seem stunted and cumbersome, at least based on what BMW is disclosing now. It’s available on 2009 BMWs worldwide, the company says.
BMW calls it a “truly innovative, cutting-edge technology for voice control” because a single voice command lets you give your car the entire address. In BMW’s example, after you’ve started the voice command by pressing a button on the steering wheel and then after you’ve summoned up the navigation module, you say something as simple as, “Berlin, Willy-Brandt-Strasse 1”, and you go straight to the Federal Chancellery. Assuming you’re not in Boston at the time.
That’s on top of BMW’s ability to send map information from Google Maps to your car. Mercedes- Benz also has a send-to-car feature. It’s a nice way to preload a bunch of vacation destinations and can also be helpful if your rich but technically inept brother-in-law can’t make navigation work in his new 7 Series; you can do it for him.
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