We’re currently at the international press drive event for the BMW 7 Series and were given a demo of how the new Remote Control Parking system works.
Basically if you have to park in a parking spot where you wouldn’t be able to open the driver door to get out of the vehicle, you can simply get out of the car and use the fancy BMW Display Key to ease the car into the parking bay.
The control via the BMW Display Key is limited to forward and backward movement. You’re also limited to a distance of a maximum of 1.5 times the length of the car. You can see how it works in the video above.
The car cannot execute a parallel or perpendicular parking manoeuvre on its own – the first car that will be able to do that will be the W213 E-Class with its Remote Parking Pilot feature.
What are the use cases in real life, you might ask. After all, if a parking bay is so tight that you cannot open your doors, surely the person whose car is parked next to you would face the same issue getting into his car later on with your brand new 7 Series parked next to it? And then there’s the risk of scratches and door dings.
The system was actually designed for tight garage spaces where you can stop right outside your garage and then drive your car in. Perhaps you had your garage built for a smaller car and moving up in life you managed to upgrade to a 7 Series but have to retain the same garage. This is where the Remote Control Parking feature will be useful.
In Malaysia I’d expect this to be a useful tool if you need to fit two huge cars into a regular porch that has its width limited by the porch’s pillars. There’s be no issue positioning the 7 Series driver door right next to a wall or big pillar with this system.
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Have to agree. At best, this is some fancy gimmick with limited real world use.
Or maybe, they have future software upgrades that can do parallel and perpendicular park? Kind of like when you upgrade your the OS in your smartphone.
“Perhaps you had your garage built for a smaller car and moving up in life you managed to upgrade to a 7 Series but have to retain the same garage”
Only idiots would upgrade to the 7 series before upgrading their home.
Not if you live in mega cities where everyone lives in apartments.
Pity. Life quality is low.
Useless feature.
Nice feature in a wrong model. I’ll assume most 7-series will be chauffeur driven and problems like parking in a tight spot would not bother owners who are always dropped off at the front door. If this was in a 3 series or even 5 series, cars which are designed to be self-driven then perhaps this feature will be more relevant
Kinda agree with you…don’t usually see owners driving 7 series anyway
highly suggest if u have a extremely good parking skill and please dont use this remote to park ur car, just be a men , drive ur own park ur own .
All I see is the evolution of new technology, and believed that it can be used somewhere else, better not making complaint while can’t even afford to buy 1 series
u see a technology improvement because u still driving proton
Thumbs up for BMW leading the market 1st on this technology. ..the rest have to catch up